Cochlear Implants and Listening Effort: the Interaction of Cognitive and Sensory Constraints

Summary

This study examines how cochlear implant users understand and comprehend speech in realistic communication situations. Through six experiments measuring listening effort via pupillometry and discourse comprehension, we will investigate how linguistic context, cognitive demands, and processing time affect speech understanding in CI users, and in normal-hearing controls) to identify factors underlying communication resilience versus vulnerability and develop improved, ecologically valid assessment and rehabilitation strategies.

Conditions

• Cochlear Implant Users

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Experiment 1: Syntactic and Semantic Context

* Recall of meaningful sentences, anomalous word strings, and unstructured word lists * Measurement of syntactic and semantic gain * Pupillometry during auditory and visual presentation

BEHAVIORAL

Experiment 2: False Hearing and Context Overuse

* Two-choice word recognition task with semantic priming/luring in multi-talker babble * Three Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) levels (heavy, medium, light noise) * Confidence ratings for responses * Pupillometry measurement

BEHAVIORAL

Experiment 3: Two-Sentence Problem

* Speech recognition and recall of single sentences vs. paired sentences * Manipulation of inter-sentence semantic predictability (high vs. low) * Four test conditions: 1-sentence, 2-sentences, 2-sentences+pre-prompt, 2-sentences+post-prompt * Pupillometry during task

BEHAVIORAL

Experiment 4: Cascading Effects on Discourse Comprehension

* Recall of 27 narrative passages (67-97 words each) * Propositional analysis scoring (main ideas, mid-level ideas, details) * Measurement of semantic hierarchy effect * Pupillometry during listening

BEHAVIORAL

Experiment 5: Self-Paced Discourse Comprehension

* 24 discourse passages (150 words each): 12 narrative, 12 expository * Continuous presentation vs. self-paced presentation (stops at clause/sentence boundaries) * Measurement of pause times and comprehension recall * Pupillometry during task

BEHAVIORAL

Experiment 6: Clinical Application

* Self-Paced Sentence Comprehension * Sentences with varying syntactic complexity (active-conjoined, subject-relative, object-relative) * Continuous vs. self-paced (with pause at major clause boundary) presentation * True/false comprehension verification statements * Pupillometry measurement

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

  collaborator NIH

• NYU Langone Health

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Mario A. Svirsky, PhD · NYU Langone Health

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

80 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-01-02

Primary Completion

2030-01-02

Completion

2030-01-02

Countries

• United States

Study Locations