Hearing Loss Is Reflected in Conversational Pupil Responses

Pupillometry has been shown to be a correlate for expected mental workload in a variety of cognitively demanding tasks, including those related to listening. Recent work has extended the application of pupillometry to interactive conversation by measuring how the pupil responds around turn-taking. This study furthers the application of pupillometry to conversation by evaluating differences in pupil responses during conversations taking place between individuals with and without hearing loss. Pairs of older Danish talkers (in which one had hearing loss, and one did not) held conversations in a variety of acoustic conditions, and their pupil responses were recorded throughout. Our findings show that both background noise and hearing loss modulate pupil responses during conversation, and further show correspondence between pupil dilation responses and measures of turn-taking behavior which have been suggested to be indicative of increased difficulty.