Effects of Hearing Impairment and Hearing Aid Amplification on Listening Effort: A Systematic Review.

The 41 studies used many different ways to define and measure listening effort, so the authors could not combine them into a single overall answer. Self-report scales varied in labels, ranges, and wording, so ratings of effort, difficulty, and ease may not have meant the same thing across studies. Dual-task studies used different secondary tasks, such as reaction time, memory, tactile patterns, or simulated driving, which may have loaded different parts of attention and memory. Many studies compared young normal-hearing listeners with older hearing-impaired listeners, or used simulated hearing loss, which makes it hard to apply the results to a single patient group. Power information was often missing, and the review rated many measurement types as low or very low quality. The search was limited to English-language articles published up to August 2014 and to studies that explicitly used the wording listening effort.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude that hearing aids reliably reduce listening effort. The review found many individual findings showing less effort with amplification, but across-study tests did not show a reliable reduction for self-ratings, dual-task performance, or reaction time.