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Purpose Listening effort can be defined as the deliberate allocation of mental resources to overcome obstacles when carrying out a listening task. Requiring mental resources, it may detract from other types of cognitive activities, leading to a general worsening of cognitive performances. The aim of this review is to provide information about how to use pupillometry to explore listening effort in children too and discuss the suitability of this technique when measuring listening effort in this population. Materials and methods After reporting a brief overview of pupillometry and listening effort, results from researchers concerning listening effort and children will be presented first to then go deeper into the research on the topic by means of pupillometry. Results Listening effort has a direct link with cognitive resources, as when the environment is surrounded by noise, the cognitive system requires additional effort and consequently the cognitive abilities required for the task that is being conducted becomes impoverished. This effect becomes more evident in the case of children, and has important consequences on speech perception and scholastic performance. Conclusions In children, listening effort is a major issue, as they are still developing mature language skills that can help them compensating for inaccurate speech recognition. Since children spend most of their time in noisy environments, it is very important to examine the consequences of listening in acoustically inadequate conditions. Pupillometry could be a good way of reflecting the effects of noise on children’s cognitive abilities by adding more objective evidence to the topic.

Background:The Internet provides individuals with intellectual disability with access to information and participation in a broader society, but it also presents risks when content is difficult to comprehend. This study aimed to test whether students with intellectual disability enhanced their comprehension of online blogs as a function of the format (text vs. video) and linguistic simplification.Method: Young students with intellectual disability read or watched text and videoblog posts about environment, health, society, and technology in their original version or a linguistically simplified/easy-to-read version. Then, they completed tests that assessed their reading processing (e.g., calibration) and comprehension of blog content.Results: Participants predicted that they would correctly answer 80% of the comprehension questions, but their average comprehension of the blog posts was 55%, regardless of the condition. Previous levels of students' reading comprehension skills predicted their blog comprehension scores and interacted with format and simplification. Those participants with higher reading comprehension skills learned more from non-simplified than from simplified blog posts while those with lower levels of reading comprehension skills did not benefit from linguistic simplification nor video-blog format although the difference with regard to higher comprehenders was lower in the video and simplified conditions.Conclusions: Improving reading comprehension abilities of students with intellectual disability is essential to prevent the digital divide while linguistic simplification is not a useful accommodation and even counterproductive for higher reading comprehenders.

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