Repairing Misperceptions of Words Early in a Sentence is More Effortful Than Repairing Later Words, Especially for Listeners With Cochlear Implants.
Michael L Smith, Matthew B Winn
PMID 39995109WHAT IT FOUND
Hearing a missing word early in a sentence costs more effort than hearing one late, especially for cochlear implant users.
Their pupils stayed dilated longer while repairing early mistakes, even when they guessed the word correctly. Not all listening errors are equally expensive.
Key findings
01Sentences with an early masked word caused larger and longer pupil dilation than sentences with a late masked word, and this effect was significantly greater in cochlear implant listeners than in younger typical hearing listeners.
02For cochlear implant listeners, pupil dilation remained elevated longer when their repair attempt was unsuccessful compared to when they correctly inferred the missing word.
03Cochlear implant listeners made significantly more errors on non-target words elsewhere in the sentence when they had to repair an early missing word, compared to when the sentence was fully intact.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was not prospectively designed to test age effects, so the observed differences between older and younger typical hearing listeners are preliminary. Pupil dilation reflects multiple psychological states including arousal and working memory, so the authors could not rule out that some effort signals were influenced by factors other than linguistic repair. An unexpected finding showed larger pupil dilation for intact sentences than for late-masked sentences during listening, which the authors could not explain. Three participants were excluded from analysis due to insufficient valid pupil data, reducing the sample from 61 to 61 for the final model.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The research was funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the greater pupil dilation in cochlear implant users as evidence of a fixed deficit in context use. The effect was specific to repairing early-missing words and persisted even when comparing to age-matched typical hearing listeners, suggesting it reflects the real-time cost of resolving ambiguity rather than a general inability to use context.