Child–Adult Differences in Using Dual-Task Paradigms to Measure Listening Effort

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the project was to investigate the effects modifying the secondary task in a dual-task paradigm to measure objective listening effort. To be specific, the complexity and depth of processing were increased relative to a simple secondary task. Method: Three dual-task paradigms were developed for school-age children. The primary task was word recognition. The secondary task was a physical response to a visual probe (simple task), a physical response to a complex probe (increased complexity), or word categorization (increased depth of processing). Sixteen adults (22-32 years, M = 25.4) and 22 children (9-17 years, M = 13.2) were tested using the 3 paradigms in quiet and noise.Results: For both groups, manipulations of the secondary task did not affect word recognition performance. For adults, increasing depth of processing increased the calculated effect of noise; however, for children, results with the deep secondary task were the least stable. Conclusions: Manipulations of the secondary task differentially affected adults and children. Consistent with previous findings, increased depth of processing enhanced paradigm sensitivity for adults. However, younger participants were more likely to demonstrate the expected effects of noise on listening effort using a secondary task that did not require deep processing.

Moderate Reverberation Does Not Increase Subjective Fatigue, Subjective Listening Effort, or Behavioral Listening Effort in School-Aged Children

“…Relative to older children, younger children are more likely to demonstrate worse speech recognition performance in noise (Klatte et al, 2010b; Neuman et al, 2010) and in reverberation (Neuman and Hochberg, 1983), so they might also be more vulnerable to the effects of noise and reverberation on listening effort. Conversely, the younger children tend to be more variable on some measures of listening effort (Picou et al, 2017a) and the additional variability might limit the possibility of demonstrating significant effects of reverberation on listening effort. Exploratory analysis with the current data set revealed a similar pattern of results with children when divided into four age groups (10–11, 12–13, 14–15, and 16–17 years).…”

“…Behavioral listening effort was evaluated using a dual-task paradigm. The paradigm, described in detail by Picou et al (2017a), included a primary task (monosyllable word recognition) and a secondary task (physical response to a visual probe). The monosyllable words, spoken by a female talker with an American English accent, were all nouns.…”

“…The background noise, when present, was a four-talker babble, as described in Picou et al (2017a). Briefly, four female talkers simultaneously read sentences from the Connected Speech Test (Cox et al, 1987).…”

“…If a task is not motivating or is too distracting, changes in listening effort will be less evident (Choi et al, 2008), as might have been the case in earlier investigations of effort in school-aged children (e.g., McFadden and Pittman, 2008). When utilizing secondary tasks that are moderately challenging, investigators have found changes in behavioral effort with changes in SNR (Hsu et al, 2017; Picou et al, 2017a).…”

Age-Related Changes in Listening Effort for Children and Teenagers With Normal Hearing and Cochlear Implants

“…This stipulates tha 1 t a shallow level of processing a piece of an auditory, linguistic signal would be the rapid analysis of acoustic characteristics such as pitch or rhythm, whereas deeper levels of processing vary from rapid mapping syllabic information to pre-existing phonological patterns (Rönnberg et al 2013) to the extraction and elaboration of semantic meaning and associations (Eysenck & Eysenck 1979). Recent studies such as Picou and Ricketts (2014), Picou et al (2017), andHsu et al (2017) have applied the depth of processing framework in their design of behavioural paradigms investigating the effects of background noise levels as well as changing secondary tasks on listening effort outcome. These paradigms challenged the participants to recognize spoken speech in unfavourable conditions (such as in noise) and thereby required the activation of explicit cognitive resources such as working memory (Rönnberg et al 2013).…”