Pupil Dilation Uncovers Extra Listening Effort in the Presence of a Single-Talker Masker

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Koelewijn ◽  
Adriana A. Zekveld ◽  
Joost M. Festen ◽  
Sophia E. Kramer
Author(s):  
Chiara Visentin ◽  
Chiara Valzolgher ◽  
Matteo Pellegatti ◽  
Paola Potente ◽  
Francesco Pavani ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Zhang ◽  
Alexandre Lehmann ◽  
Mickael Deroche

AbstractRecent research has demonstrated that pupillometry is a robust measure for quantifying listening effort. However, pupillary responses in listening situations where multiple cognitive functions are engaged and sustained over a period of time remain hard to interpret. This limits our conceptualisation and understanding of listening effort in realistic situations, because rarely in everyday life are people challenged by one task at a time. Therefore, the purpose of this experiment was to reveal the dynamics of listening effort in a sustained listening condition using a word repeat and recall task.Words were presented in quiet and speech-shaped noise at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). Participants were presented with lists of 10 words, and required to repeat each word after its presentation. At the end of the list, participants either recalled as many words as possible or moved on to the next list. Simultaneously, their pupil dilation was recorded throughout the whole experiment.When only word repeating was required, peak pupil dilation (PPD) was bigger in 0dB versus other conditions; whereas when recall was required, PPD showed no difference among SNR levels and PPD in 0dB was smaller than repeat-only condition. Baseline pupil diameter and PPD followed different growth patterns across the 10 serial positions in conditions requiring recall: baseline pupil diameter built up progressively and plateaued in the later positions (but shot up at the onset of recall, i.e. the end of the list); PPD decreased at a pace quicker than in repeat-only condition.The current findings concur with the recent literature in showing that additional cognitive load during a speech intelligibility task could disturb the well-established relation between pupillary response and listening effort. Both the magnitude and temporal pattern of task-evoked pupillary response differ greatly in complex listening conditions, urging for more listening effort studies in complex and realistic listening situations.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Defne Alfandari Menase ◽  
Michael Richter ◽  
Dorothea Wendt ◽  
Lorenz Fiedler ◽  
Graham Naylor

Objectives: Listening effort and fatigue are common complaints among individuals with hearing impairment (HI); however, the underlying mechanisms, and relationships between listening effort and fatigue are not well understood. Recent quantitative research suggests that the peak pupil dilation (PPD), which is commonly measured concurrent to the performance of a speech-in-noise task as an index of listening effort, may be informative of daily-life fatigue, but it remains unknown whether the same is true for task-induce fatigue. As fatigue effects are known to manifest differently depending on motivation, the main aim of the present study was to experimentally investigate the interactive effects of task-induced fatigue and motivation on the PPD. Design: In a pre-/post- fatigue within-subject design, 18 participants with normal hearing (NH) engaged in a 98-trial-long speech-in-noise task (i.e., a load sequence, approximately 40 min. long), which either excluded or included additional memory demands (light vs. heavy load sequence). Before and after the load sequence, baseline pupil diameter (BPD) and PPD were measured during shorter probe blocks of speech-in-noise tasks. In these probe blocks, if participants correctly repeated more than 60% of the keywords, they could win vouchers of either 20 or 160 Danish krones worth (low incentive vs. high incentive). After each probe block, participants reported their invested effort, tendency for quitting, and perceived performance. Results: The BPD in anticipation of listening declined from pre- to post-load sequence, suggesting an overall decrease in arousal, but the decline did not scale with the magnitude of the load sequence, nor with the amount of monetary incentive. Overall, there was larger pre- to post-load sequence decline in PPD when the load sequence was heavy and when the monetary incentives were low. Post-hoc analyses showed that the decline in PPD was only significant in the heavy-load sequence-low reward condition. The speech-in-noise task performance, self-reported effort, and self-reported tendency to quit listening did not change with the experimental conditions. Conclusions This is the first study to investigate the influence of task-induced fatigue on BPD and PPD. Whereas BPD was not sensitive to the magnitude of previous load sequence and monetary incentives, the decline in PPD from pre- to post- load sequence was significant after the heavy load sequence when the offered monetary incentives were low. This result supports the understanding that fatigue and motivation interactively influence listening effort.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0233251
Author(s):  
Yue Zhang ◽  
Alexandre Lehmann ◽  
Mickael Deroche

Recent research has demonstrated that pupillometry is a robust measure for quantifying listening effort. However, pupillary responses in listening situations where multiple cognitive functions are engaged and sustained over a period of time remain hard to interpret. This limits our conceptualisation and understanding of listening effort in realistic situations, because rarely in everyday life are people challenged by one task at a time. Therefore, the purpose of this experiment was to reveal the dynamics of listening effort in a sustained listening condition using a word repeat and recall task. Words were presented in quiet and speech-shaped noise at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR): 0dB, 7dB, 14dB and quiet. Participants were presented with lists of 10 words, and required to repeat each word after its presentation. At the end of the list, participants either recalled as many words as possible or moved on to the next list. Simultaneously, their pupil dilation was recorded throughout the whole experiment. When only word repeating was required, peak pupil dilation (PPD) was bigger in 0dB versus other conditions; whereas when recall was required, PPD showed no difference among SNR levels and PPD in 0dB was smaller than repeat-only condition. Baseline pupil diameter and PPD followed different variation patterns across the 10 serial positions within a block for conditions requiring recall: baseline pupil diameter built up progressively and plateaued in the later positions (but shot up when listeners were recalling the previously heard words from memory); PPD decreased at a pace quicker than in repeat-only condition. The current findings demonstrate that additional cognitive load during a speech intelligibility task could disturb the well-established relation between pupillary response and listening effort. Both the magnitude and temporal pattern of task-evoked pupillary response differ greatly in complex listening conditions, urging for more listening effort studies in complex and realistic listening situations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Silcox ◽  
Brennan Payne

There is a disparity between the fields of cognitive audiology and cognitive electrophysiology as to how linguistic context is utilized when listening to perceptually challenging speech. To gain a clearer picture of how listening effort impacts context use, we conducted a pre-registered study to simultaneously examine electrophysiological, pupillometric, and behavioral responses when listening to sentences varying in contextual constraint and acoustic challenge in the same sample. Participants (N = 44) listened to sentences that were highly constraining and completed with expected or unexpected sentence-final words (“The prisoners were planning their escape/party”) or were low-constraint sentences with unexpected sentence-final words (“All day she thought about the party”). Sentences were presented either in quiet or with +3 dB SNR background noise. Pupillometry and EEG were simultaneously recorded and subsequent sentence recognition and word recall were measured. While the N400 expectancy effect was diminished by noise, suggesting impaired real-time context use, we simultaneously observed a beneficial effect of constraint on subsequent recognition memory for degraded speech. Importantly, analyses of trial-to-trial coupling between pupil dilation and N400 amplitude showed that when participants’ showed increased listening effort (i.e., greater pupil dilation), there was a subsequent recovery of the N400 effect, but at the same time, higher effort was related to poorer subsequent sentence recognition and word recall. Collectively, these findings suggest divergent effects of acoustic challenge and listening effort on context use: while noise impairs the rapid use of context to facilitate lexical semantic processing in general, this negative effect is attenuated when listeners increase effort in response to noise. However, this effort-induced reliance on context for online word processing comes at the cost of poorer subsequent memory.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. e153-e165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew B. Winn ◽  
Jan R. Edwards ◽  
Ruth Y. Litovsky

2018 ◽  
Vol 367 ◽  
pp. 106-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Koelewijn ◽  
Adriana A. Zekveld ◽  
Thomas Lunner ◽  
Sophia E. Kramer

2018 ◽  
Vol 365 ◽  
pp. 90-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Ohlenforst ◽  
Dorothea Wendt ◽  
Sophia E. Kramer ◽  
Graham Naylor ◽  
Adriana A. Zekveld ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1549-1560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcy K. Lau ◽  
Candace Hicks ◽  
Tobias Kroll ◽  
Steven Zupancic

Purpose Listening effort has traditionally been measured using subjective rating scales and behavioral measures. Recent physiological measures of listening effort have utilized pupil dilation. Using a combination of physiological and subjective measures of listening effort, this study aimed to identify differences in listening effort during 2 auditory tasks: sentence recognition and word recognition. Method Pupil dilation and subjective ratings of listening effort were obtained for auditory tasks utilizing AzBio sentences recognition and Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 words recognition, across 3 listening situations: in quiet, at +6 dB signal-to-noise ratio, and at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Task accuracy was recorded for each of the 6 conditions, as well as peak pupil dilation and a subjective rating of listening effort. Results A significant impact of listening situation (quiet vs. noise) and task type (sentence recognition vs. word recognition) on both physiological and subjective measures was found. There was a significant interaction between listening situation and task type, suggesting that contextual cues may only be beneficial when audibility is uncompromised. The current study found no correlation between the physiological and subjective measures, possibly suggesting that these measures analyze different aspects of cognitive effort in a listening task.


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