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Published on: December 5, 2014
Cross-modal attentional allocation in individuals with listening difficulties: evidence from a complex dual-task
Chie Obuchi1, Tetsuaki Kawase2, Yayoi Yamamoto3
1Institute of Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to determine whether listening difficulties (LiD), defined as difficulties in understanding speech in noisy environments despite normal hearing, reflect cross-modal attentional limits under visual load in adults.
Design:
This cross-sectional study used a dual-task paradigm (1-back visual plus visual-audio digit-matching) that required focused visual attention while monitoring auditory stimuli. Errors and reaction times were analysed.
Study Sample:
Twenty adults with listening difficulties and 20 adult controls with normal hearing were enrolled.
Results:
The participants with LiD performed significantly worse than the controls in the 1-back visual (U = 88.5, p = 0.002) and visual-audio matching tasks (U = 38.0, p < 0.001), with a larger effect size observed for the latter. The receiver operating characteristic analysis showed high discriminative accuracy for the visual-audio matching task (cut-off = 6 errors, sensitivity = 85%, specificity = 90%). The median reaction times did not differ (U = 149.0, p = 0.17), although they increased with errors (LiD: r(18)=0.79, p < 0.001; controls: r(18)=0.45, p = 0.05).
Conclusions:
The participants with LiD demonstrated limited cross-modal attentional capacity under visual load, which disproportionately disrupted auditory monitoring. The dual-task paradigm may serve as a sensitive tool for clinical differentiation of LiD and underscores the importance of evaluating cognitive contributions to LiD.
