Listening Effort Is Not the Same as Speech Intelligibility Score.

Area of Science:

• Auditory neuroscience
• Speech perception research
• Human-computer interaction

Background:

• Listening effort is a primary concern for individuals with hearing loss.
• Speech intelligibility scores are often used as a proxy for listening effort but may oversimplify the issue.
• Understanding the mechanisms of listening effort beyond intelligibility is crucial for effective interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To elucidate the mechanisms of listening effort not captured by speech intelligibility scores.
• To investigate how specific types of errors and ambiguity resolution impact listening effort.
• To develop a more explanatory account of listening effort.

Main Methods:

• Utilized sentence-repetition tasks with planned or analyzed errors.
• Measured listening effort using changes in pupil size.
• Included participants with normal hearing and cochlear implants.

Main Results:

• Mental correction of misperceived words increases listening effort, even with correct responses.
• For incorrect responses, listening effort depends on error type, position, and ambiguity resolution, not just word accuracy.
• A taxonomy of error types was developed and validated.

Conclusions:

• Listening effort is a complex phenomenon influenced by cognitive processes beyond simple accuracy.
• Speech perception tasks can be designed to probe specific effort-related error mechanisms.
• Dissociating mental correction from error count allows for a more explanatory model of listening effort.