Input-related demands: vocoded sentences evoke different pupillometrics and subjective listening effort than sentences in speech-shaped noise.
Nicholas P Giuliani, Soumya Venkitakrishnan, Yu-Hsiang Wu
PMID 36519812WHAT IT FOUND
When word recognition was similar, vocoded sentences felt more effortful than sentences in noise.
People rated vocoded listening 12.3% more effortful on a 0 to 100 scale. This was a lab study of normal-hearing young adults.
Key findings
01Vocoded sentences were rated 12.3% more effortful than sentences in noise, with a range of 9.7 to 15.4%, even though word recognition accuracy was similar.
02Peak pupil dilation was larger for vocoded sentences than for sentences in noise and larger than for unprocessed sentences.
03Peak pupil dilation did not change significantly as task difficulty increased, but it differed across word recognition accuracy bins for vocoded sentences.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study included only 19 normal-hearing young adults, so it does not show what happens in older adults or people with hearing loss. The listening tasks were laboratory sentences, not a clinical treatment or real-world communication setting. A large share of pupil trials was removed during processing, including 29% of vocoded responses and 40% of noise responses during the first baseline period, which may have reduced the ability to detect small effects. Eye-tracking data were unusable for 1 participant, so 19 of 20 recruited participants were analysed. The paper describes an exploratory laboratory comparison of listening effort, not a patient outcome or intervention trial.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include a conflicts of interest statement. The article is marked as supported by N.I.H. extramural research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that vocoded speech is more effortful for patients with hearing loss or that pupil size should guide clinical care. The study tested 19 normal-hearing young adults in a laboratory, and the vocoded sentences were simulated stimuli, not a clinical intervention.