Pupillometry as an Objective Measure of Sustained Attention in Young and Older Listeners

Abstract

The ability to sustain attention on a task-relevant sound source while avoiding distraction from concurrent sounds is fundamental to listening in crowded environments. We aimed to (a) devise an experimental paradigm with which this aspect of listening can be isolated and (b) evaluate the applicability of pupillometry as an objective measure of sustained attention in young and older populations. We designed a paradigm that continuously measured behavioral responses and pupillometry during 25-s trials. Stimuli contained a number of concurrent, spectrally distinct tone streams. On each trial, participants detected gaps in one of the streams while resisting distraction from the others. Behavior demonstrated increasing difficulty with time-on-task and with number/proximity of distractor streams. In young listeners (N ¼ 20; aged 18 to 35 years), pupil diameter (on the group and individual level) was dynamically modulated by instantaneous task difficulty: Periods where behavioral performance revealed a strain on sustained attention were accompanied by increased pupil diameter. Only trials on which participants performed successfully were included in the pupillometry analysis so that the observed effects reflect task demands as opposed to failure to attend. In line with existing reports, we observed global changes to pupil dynamics in the older group (N ¼ 19; aged 63 to 79 years) including decreased pupil diameter, limited dilation range, and reduced temporal variability. However, despite these changes, older listeners showed similar effects of attentive tracking to those observed in the young listeners. Overall, our results demonstrate that pupillometry can be a reliable and time-sensitive measure of attentive tracking over long durations in both young and (with caveats) older listeners.

The effect of healthy aging on change detection and sensitivity to predictable structure in crowded acoustic scenes

“…Our results suggest that developing more sensitive auditory sustained attention tasks (e.g. Zhao et al, 2019 ) may be crucial for accurate assessment of older listeners' scene analysis ability.…”

An exploratory Study of EEG Alpha Oscillation and Pupil Dilation in Hearing-Aid Users During Effortful listening to Continuous Speech

“…Using longer stimuli (30 seconds) in this study, however, resulted in smaller dilation relative to the baseline, in both low and high SNR conditions (Fig 2C). This is probably caused by the sensitivity of the pupil to task alertness, which could be more pronounced in the first seconds of the trial and has previously been observed in longer pupil data collection as well (e.g., [37], [51]). The relative decrease of MPD measurement over 30 seconds might be due to evoked pupil dilation to the background noise in the baseline.…”

Pupillometry Assessment of Speech Recognition and Listening Experience in Adult Cochlear Implant Patients

“…Metrics used to characterize the TEPR are the mean dilation, the maximal value, and the latency of the peak response to a particular stimulation, the allocation of more resources (higher load) leading to larger pupil dilation. It is, however, a complex experimental model with several crucial variables, as previous works have shown that TEPR characteristics are modulated by the complexity of the cognitive task, by attentional or memory load, and by motivation ( Kahneman and Beatty, 1966 ; Kahneman, 1973 ; Ben-Nun, 1986 ; Peelle, 2018 ; Zhao et al, 2019 ; and see Beatty, 1982 ; Beatty and Lucero-Wagoner, 2000 ; Winn et al, 2018 ; Zekveld et al, 2018 for reviews).…”