A Glimpse of Memory Through the Eyes: Pupillary Responses Measured During Encoding Reflect the Likelihood of Subsequent Memory Recall in an Auditory Free Recall Test.
Andreea Micula, Jerker Rönnberg, Patrycja Książek and 4 others
PMID 36305085WHAT IT FOUND
For hearing aid users listening in noise, pupil size during a sentence predicted whether they would later recall the final word.
Larger pupils meant higher recall odds. Hearing aid noise reduction did not change this likelihood. Working memory scores showed no consistent link.
Key findings
01Larger task-evoked peak pupil dilation during encoding was significantly associated with a higher likelihood of subsequent memory recall.
02Hearing aid noise reduction did not have a significant effect on the likelihood of subsequent memory recall.
03The significant association between working memory capacity and recall likelihood disappeared when one outlier participant was excluded.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 21 participants, and the link between working memory and recall was driven by a single outlier. The background noise was 16-talker babble, which may behave differently than the fewer-talker noises used in previous studies showing benefits from noise reduction. Participants listened at a signal-to-noise ratio adjusted for 95% word recognition, which may not reflect the harder listening conditions patients face daily. The age range was wide (22 to 73 years), though driven by one young participant, potentially limiting generalizability to older populations.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the William Demant Foundation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that hearing aid noise reduction improves memory for spoken words. The study found no significant effect of noise reduction on the likelihood of subsequent recall, even though previous research suggests it helps overall performance.