Quantifying the Effects of Motivation on Listening Effort: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Peter J Carolan, Antje Heinrich, Kevin J Munro and 1 others
PMID 35077257WHAT IT FOUND
Listeners put more effort into listening when they were motivated, whether by money, feedback, feeling competent or being told they were being assessed.
Personality traits mattered less. How effort was measured changed how large the effect appeared.
Key findings
01Pooled across 43 studies and 187 outcome measures, motivation increased listening effort, with a small-to-moderate overall effect (d = 0.34, 95% CI 0.28 to 0.40, p < .001).
02Every motivational factor raised listening effort, and feeling competent produced a bigger effect than having a relevant personality trait (Q = 8.81, p = .003). No other comparison between motivational factors reached significance.
03For financial reward, personality traits and evaluative threat, the size of the measured effect depended on how listening effort was measured: financial reward was larger on physiological than subjective measures (Q = 9.53, p = .002), personality traits were larger on physiological than behavioural measures, and evaluative threat was larger on subjective than physiological measures.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Most included studies gave no justification for their sample size, which the authors rate as a high risk of bias, and about a fifth were at high risk from incomplete outcome reporting. The authors state that these quality problems reduce confidence in the effect sizes. The studies disagreed with each other: heterogeneity was moderate to high, and every prediction interval crossed zero, so repeating the same experiment could produce no effect or an effect in the opposite direction. Some subgroup results rest on very few outcomes. Financial reward measured by self-report came from six outcomes, fewer than the ten the authors say are needed before this kind of analysis is trustworthy. The pooled studies were not alike. They differed in participant age and hearing level, in the listening material (tones, digits, sentences, vocoded speech), and in how motivation was created, with reward amounts ranging from small change to large sums. For reaction-time outcomes the authors used the absolute size of the effect, because greater effort can either speed responses up or slow them down, so the direction of the effect is not preserved for those measures. Where a study varied listening difficulty, the analysis used the demand-by-motivation interaction if it was available and otherwise the hardest listening condition only.
Declared interests
The review was funded by the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (award BRC-1215-20007). The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Within the review, the authors report that none of the included studies declared a conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that praising, rewarding or reassuring a client makes their listening easier. No study in the review tested a treatment, every prediction interval crossed zero, and most of the pooled studies gave no sample size justification, which the authors call a high risk of bias. The pooled effect is an average of laboratory experiments, not a therapy result.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →