Behavioral Assessment of Listening Effort Using a Dual-Task Paradigm.
Jean-Pierre Gagné, Jana Besser, Ulrike Lemke
PMID 28091178WHAT IT FOUND
Dual-task tests often show older adults and people with hearing loss use more listening effort in noise.
But methods vary widely, and these lab measures do not match patients' own effort ratings.
Key findings
01In dual-task studies, older adults with normal or near-normal hearing generally showed greater listening effort than younger adults, even when speech recognition was equated.
02Adults with hearing loss generally showed more listening effort than age-matched normal-hearing adults, especially during speech understanding in noise.
03Dual-task listening-effort scores did not consistently match self-reported effort.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This was a scoping review rather than a systematic review, and the authors did not assess study quality. The included studies used many different primary tasks, secondary tasks, and ways of calculating effort, so findings are hard to combine. Most studies tested adults in laboratory listening tasks, so they do not show how dual-task effort translates to everyday communication or clinical assessment. The review did not analyse child studies in detail, so it does not speak to children.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat dual-task tests as a standard clinical measure of listening effort. The review found no standard procedure, and dual-task costs did not consistently match self-reported effort.