The Involvement of Listening Effort in Explaining Bilingual Listening Under Adverse Listening Conditions.
Dana Bsharat-Maalouf, Tamar Degani, Hanin Karawani
PMID 37941413WHAT IT FOUND
Bilingual listeners often showed greater effort in their less dominant language, even when accuracy was similar, but reaction-time and self-report results were less consistent.
Key findings
01Pupil size and brain-wave measures indicated greater effort for L2 listening, even when understanding was similar.
02Reaction time and self-report results were less consistent; bilinguals sometimes responded more slowly without reporting greater effort, and some showed no group difference.
03Effort rose when competing speech matched the target language and when noise was more difficult.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The review includes a limited number of studies, and the studies differ in participants, languages, noise types, and effort measures. Physiological, behavioral, and self-report measures may tap different aspects of effort and do not always agree. Most studies compared bilinguals in their less dominant language with monolinguals, so differences may reflect immigration, education, culture, or language exposure rather than bilingualism alone. There is no agreed definition or best measure of listening effort. The paper reviews lab studies and does not test whether assessment or treatment changes effort.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. Funding came from the Israel Science Foundation and a University of Haifa student fellowship.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that normal speech understanding means low effort. Some bilingual listeners understood the speech but still showed greater effort, and the review does not test whether reducing effort changes outcomes.