The Effects of Daily Life Auditory Demands on Listening Effort, Affect, and Fatigue as a Function of Hearing Loss.
Nicole A Huizinga, Laura Keur-Huizinga, Adriana A Zekveld and 2 others
PMID 41773676WHAT IT FOUND
In daily life, moments with more listening demand raised effort and fatigue, especially in people with worse hearing.
Effort, not mood, explained the demand-fatigue link.
Key findings
01When participants faced more environmental or social listening demand than usual, they reported more fatigue, and this was stronger when hearing thresholds were higher.
02Listening effort carried the association between higher auditory demand and fatigue across environmental, social, and subjective demand.
03Affect did not mediate environmental or social demand effects. Only subjective demand showed an indirect path through worse mood.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This was an observational study. It shows associations in daily life, but it does not prove that reducing demand or effort would reduce fatigue. The fatigue question asked about general fatigue, not listening-specific fatigue. It cannot separate hearing-related tiredness from other tiredness. Participants were not screened for fatigue-related conditions, tinnitus, retirement status, personality traits, or hearing aid use. These could have affected reports. Missing responses were not imputed. Analyses used available data, so results could be affected by who did not respond. Affect and fatigue were asked in the moment. Effort referred to the previous 15 minutes. This makes direct comparison harder. The subjective demand score was split into three levels by tertiles. This may not generalize to other samples.
Declared interests
The work was supported by Sonmw (grant 09120011910029). The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the effort-fatigue link as proof that reducing effort will reduce fatigue. This was an observational daily-life study, and the fatigue questions were general rather than listening-specific.
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 →