Measuring the Subjective Cost of Listening Effort Using a Discounting Task.
Drew J McLaughlin, Todd S Braver, Jonathan E Peelle
PMID 33439751WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults were more willing to accept smaller rewards to avoid difficult listening tasks than younger adults.
This subjective cost of listening effort was linked to poorer hearing and working memory in older adults, but not in younger adults.
Key findings
01Older adults discounted more than young adults at difficult signal-to-noise ratios, choosing smaller rewards to avoid effort.
02For older adults, greater discounting correlated with smaller working memory capacities and poorer hearing thresholds.
03For young adults, neither working memory capacity nor hearing thresholds correlated with discounting behavior.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used a convenience sample of university students for the young adult group, which may limit generalizability. The young adult group had a restricted range of hearing and working memory abilities, which may have masked correlations seen in older adults. The discounting task design required participants to perform every trial, which may have influenced motivation differently than if only a subset of trials were performed. The analysis model was not preregistered, although the primary comparisons were.
Declared interests
The research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that younger adults experience the same subjective cost of listening effort linked to their cognitive abilities. The study found that working memory and hearing thresholds predicted effort discounting in older adults, but not in young adults, possibly due to the restricted range of abilities in the younger sample.