Evaluating Listening Effort in Unilateral, Bimodal, and Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users

Evaluate listening effort (LE) in unilateral, bilateral, and bimodal cochlear implant (CI) users. Establish an easy-to-implement task of LE that could be useful for clinical decision making.

Prospective cohort study.

Tertiary neurotology center.

The Sentence Final Word Identification and Recall Task, an established measure of LE, was modified to include challenging listening conditions (multitalker babble, gender, and emotional variation; test), in addition to single-talker sentences (control). Participants listened to lists of sentences in each condition and recalled the last word of each sentence. LE was quantified by percentage of words correctly recalled and was compared across conditions, across CI groups, and within subjects (best aided vs monaural).

A total of 24 adults between the ages of 37 and 82 years enrolled, including 4 unilateral CI users (CI), 10 bilateral CI users (CICI), and 10 bimodal CI users (CIHA). Task condition impacted LE (P < .001), but hearing configuration and listener group did not (P = .90). Working memory capacity and contralateral hearing contributed to individual performance.

This study adds to the growing body of literature on LE in challenging listening conditions for CI users and demonstrates feasibility of a simple behavioral task that could be implemented clinically to assess LE. This study also highlights the potential benefits of bimodal hearing and individual hearing and cognitive factors in understanding individual differences in performance, which will be evaluated through further research.