Pupillometry reveals changes in physiological arousal during a sustained listening task

McGarrigle, Ronan; Dawes, Piers; Stewart, Andrew J.; Kuchinsky, Stefanie E.; Munro, Kevin J.

doi:10.1111/psyp.12772

Cited by 101 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 57 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

124

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is likely that in our study, the 579 steeper decrease of PPD in repeat-with-recall condition could also be the sign of 580 overload and fatigue with continuing effort to recognise, encode and rehearse isolated 581 words. However, the decreasing trend reported in McGarrigle et al[42] was not found 582 in McGarrigle et al[73] when using a similar test for school-aged children, so it is still 583 unclear how reliably and accurately this metric is related to fatigue.584Yet another possible explanation to the steeper decrease of PPD in 585…”

mentioning

confidence: 94%

Disentangling listening effort and memory load beyond behavioural evidence: Pupillary response to listening effort during a concurrent memory task

Zhang

Lehmann

Deroche

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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). 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.April 29, 2020 1/41Baseline 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.Introduction 1 Effortless as it seems, everyday communication is cognitively demanding. Degraded 2 speech input induced by adverse listening conditions (e.g., background noise, 3 reverberation etc.) and peripheral hearing loss introduces mismatch between perceived 4 acoustic signals and their canonical forms [1][2][3]. Resolving this mismatch demands more 5 resources from the finite pool of cognitive resources, leading to fewer resources for other 6 cognitive tasks and eventually overload [4,5]. Populations facing long-term auditory 7 challenges are specifically at risk. For instance, people with hearing impairment and 8 particularly those using cochlear implants (CI) often experience high and sustained 9 effort, even when speech recognition performance is similar [6-10]. CI listeners have to 10 engage and deploy more cognitive resources to achieve a satisfactory level of speech 11 communication due to electric hearing. Such elevated and sustained listening effort is 12 associated with detrimental psychosocial consequence...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 94%

Disentangling listening effort and memory load beyond behavioural evidence: Pupillary response to listening effort during a concurrent memory task

Zhang

Lehmann

Deroche

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Cognitive and emotional processes evoke pupillary dilation in both humans and non-human primates, reflecting vigilance, arousal and attention (Laeng, Sirois & Gredebäck, 2012; Schneider M. et al, 2016; Becket Ebitz & Moore, 2017; McGarrigle et al, 2017; Foroughi, Sibley & Coyne, 2017). Hence, pupillary diameters may serve as an index of brain activity and mental efforts (or lack hereof).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated pupillometry to detect command following in neurological patients: A proof-of-concept study

Vassilieva

Olsen

Peinkhofer

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Levels of consciousness in patients with acute and chronic brain injury are notoriously underestimated. Paradigms based on electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may detect covert consciousness in unresponsive patients but are subject to logistical challenges and the need for advanced statistical analysis. Methods: To assess the feasibility of automated pupillometry for the detection of command following, we enrolled 20 healthy volunteers and 48 patients with a wide range of neurological disorders, including 7 patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), who were asked to engage in mental arithmetic. Results: Fourteen of 20 (70%) healthy volunteers and 17 of 43 (39.5%) neurological patients, including 1 in the ICU, fulfilled prespecified criteria for command following by showing pupillary dilations during ≥ 4 of 5 arithmetic tasks. None of the 5 sedated and unconscious ICU patients passed this threshold. Conclusions: Automated pupillometry combined with mental arithmetic appears to be a promising paradigm for the detection of covert consciousness in people with brain injury. We plan to build on this study by focusing on non-communicating ICU patients in whom the level of consciousness is unknown. If some of these patients show reproducible pupillary dilation during mental arithmetic, this would suggest that the present paradigm can reveal conscious awareness in unresponsive patients in whom standard investigations have failed to detect signs of covert consciousness.

show abstract

“…A device that offers large effort benefits and modest intelligibility benefits could greatly improve communication for individuals for whom recognizing speech in noisy environments can be difficult and often exhausting (Gosselin & Gagné, 2011;Tun, McCoy, & Wingfield, 2009;Wingfield et al, 2005) . Because listening to speech in real-world settings rarely occurs in isolation, decreases in listening effort can have important consequences for listeners and may be expected to improve users' ability to multitask, recall what they heard (e.g., see Sommers & Phelps, 2016;Van Engen, Chandrasekaran, & Smiljanic, 2012) , or reduce fatigue (Alhanbali, Dawes, Lloyd, & Munro, 2017;McGarrigle, Dawes, Stewart, Kuchinsky, & Munro, 2016;McGarrigle et al, 2014) .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A modulating circle reduces listening effort and improves spoken word recognition in older adults

Brown¹,

Strand²,

Engen³

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objectives. Perceiving spoken language in noise can be a cognitively demanding task, particularly for older adults and those with hearing impairment. The current research assessed whether an abstract visual stimulus—a circle that modulates with the acoustic amplitude envelope of the speech—can affect speech processing in older adults. We hypothesized that, in line with recent research on younger adults, the circle would reduce listening effort during a word identification task. Given that older adults have slower processing speeds and poorer auditory temporal sensitivity than young adults, we expected that the abstract visual stimulus may have additional benefits for older adults, as it provides another source of information to compensate for limitations in auditory processing. Thus, we further hypothesized that, in contrast to the results from research on young adults, the circle would also improve word identification in noise for older adults.Design. Sixty-five older adults ages 65 to 83 (M = 71.11; SD = 4.01) with age-appropriate hearing completed four blocks of trials: two blocks (one with the modulating circle, one without) with a word identification task in two-talker babble, followed by two more word identification blocks that also included a simultaneous dual-task paradigm to assess listening effort.Results. Relative to an audio-only condition, the presence of the modulating circle substantially reduced listening effort (as indicated by faster responses to the secondary task in the dual-task paradigm) and also moderately improved spoken word intelligibility. Conclusions. Seeing the face of the talker substantially improves spoken word identification, but this is the first demonstration that another form of visual input—an abstract modulating circle—can also provide modest intelligibility benefits and substantial reductions in listening effort. These findings could have clinical or practical applications, as the modulating circle can be generated in real time to accompany speech in noisy situations, thereby improving speech intelligibility and reducing effort or fatigue for individuals who may have particular difficulty recognizing speech in background noise.

show abstract

Pupillometry reveals changes in physiological arousal during a sustained listening task

Cited by 101 publications

References 57 publications

Disentangling listening effort and memory load beyond behavioural evidence: Pupillary response to listening effort during a concurrent memory task

Disentangling listening effort and memory load beyond behavioural evidence: Pupillary response to listening effort during a concurrent memory task

Automated pupillometry to detect command following in neurological patients: A proof-of-concept study

A modulating circle reduces listening effort and improves spoken word recognition in older adults

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About