Listening Effort in Daily Life Communication: What do Pupillometry Studies Tell Us?

When hearing loss impedes correct speech perception, listeners try to fill in the parts that they failed to hear by relying on the linguistic context, exploiting their working memory capacity, paying attention and concentrating continuously. According to the Framework for Effortful Listening (FUEL), this can impose frequent strains on communication situations resulting in effortful listening. In our lab, we use the method of pupillometry to assess the extent to which the demands imposed by a task consume resources to maintain successful task execution. We conducted a series of pupillometry studies to examine the interplay between a range of variables and the pupil response. These variables include hearing status (normally hearing vs. hearing impaired), a broad range of signal-to-noise ratio’s (SNRs) corresponding to sentence recognition performance varying from 0 to 100%, different masker types and a noise reduction scheme in a hearing aid. The results yield insights into aspects of daily life listening of NH and HI listeners that are not captured by traditional speech perception measures. Highlights will be presented.