Effects of Listening Effort on Sentence Processing and Memory (Study 1)

Summary

Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is among the most prevalent chronic conditions in aging and has a profoundly negative effect on speech comprehension, leading to increased social isolation, reduced quality of life, and increased risk for the development of dementia in older adulthood. Typical audiological tests and interventions, which focus on measuring and restoring audibility, do not explain the full range of cognitive difficulties that adults with hearing loss experience in speech comprehension. For example, adults with SNHL have to work disproportionally harder to decode acoustically degraded speech. That additional effort is thought to diminish shared executive and attentional resources for higher-level language processes, impacting subsequent comprehension and memory, even when speech is completely intelligible. This phenomenon has been referred to as listening effort (LE). There is a growing understanding that these cognitive factors are a critical and often "hidden effect" of hearing loss. At the same time, the effects of LE on the neural mechanisms of language processing and memory in SNHL are currently not well understood. In order to develop evidence-based assessments and interventions to improve comprehension and memory in SNHL, it is critical that we elucidate the cognitive and neural mechanisms of LE and its consequences for speech comprehension. In this project, we adopt a multi-method approach, combining methods from clinical audiology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience to address this gap of knowledge. Specifically, we adopt a novel and innovative method of co-registering pupillometry (a reliable physiological measure of LE) and language-related event-related brain potential (ERP) measures during real-time speech processing to characterize the effects of acoustic challenge and LE on high-level language processes (e.g., semantic retrieval, syntactic integration) and subsequent speech memory in older adults with SNHL. This innovative work addresses a time-sensitive gap in the literature regarding the identification of objective and reliable markers of specific neurocognitive processes impacted by acoustic challenge and LE in age-related SNHL.

Conditions

• Sentence Stimulus
• Auditory Noise

Interventions

OTHER

Sentence Stimulus

The sentences are designed such that a specific target word is either (a) Plausible (normal), (b) a semantic pragmatic violation, or (c) a morpho-syntactic violation. Example: e.g., "Every morning at breakfast, the boys would (A: EAT)/ (B.PLANT )/ (C. EATS ) eggs..."

OTHER

Auditory Noise

The sentences will be presented either A) in quiet, or B) with speech- shaped stationary background noise presented 3dB below the speech.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Utah

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Brennan R Payne, PhD · University of Utah

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

60 Years

Max Age

90 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-01-01

Primary Completion

2023-08-30

Completion

2023-08-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations