The results of this study suggest that, on the average, hearing aids can reduce objectively measured listening effort. Furthermore, people who are slow verbal processors are more likely to derive hearing aid benefit for listening effort, perhaps because hearing aids improve the auditory input. Although background noise increased objective listening effort, no listener characteristic predicted susceptibility to noise. With regard to visual cues, while there was no effect on average of providing visual cues, there were some listener characteristics that were related to changes in listening effort with vision. Although these relationships are exploratory, they do suggest that these inherent listener characteristics like working memory capacity, verbal processing speed, and lipreading ability may influence susceptibility to changes in listening effort and thus warrant further study.

Overall, the results support the hypothesis that integrating auditory and visual cues requires cognitive resources in some participants. The data indicate that low lipreading ability or low WMC is associated with relatively effortful integration of auditory and visual information in noise.

None of the dual-task paradigms were sensitive to the effects of visual cues. Furthermore, changing the complexity of the secondary task did not change dual-task paradigm sensitivity to the effects of background noise on listening effort for either group of listeners. However, the paradigm whose secondary task involved deeper processing was more sensitive to the effects of background noise for both groups of listeners. While this paradigm differed from the others in several respects, depth of processing may be partially responsible for the increased sensitivity. Therefore, this paradigm may be a valuable tool for evaluating other factors that affect listening effort.

The strong directional processing, which was a cue-preserving bilateral beamformer, provided additional sentence recognition benefit in realistic listening situations. Furthermore, despite reducing the interaural differences, the authors measured no significant negative consequences on listening effort or subjective preference, although it is unknown whether differences might be found using more sensitive measures. In addition, gross localization was disrupted at large eccentricities if visual cues were not present. While further study is needed, these results support consideration of this cue-preserving, bilateral beamformer technology for patients who experience difficulty with speech recognition in noise, which is not adequately addressed by conventional directional hearing aid processing.

Objectives-The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of degree and configuration of hearing loss on the use of, and benefit from, information in amplified high-and low-frequency speech presented in background noise.Design-Sixty-two adults with a wide range of high-and low-frequency sensorineural hearing loss (5-115+ dB HL) participated. To examine the contribution of speech information in different frequency regions, speech understanding in noise was assessed in multiple low-and high-pass filter conditions, as well as a band-pass (713-3534 Hz) and wideband (143-8976 Hz) condition. To increase audibility over a wide frequency range, speech and noise were amplified based on each individual's hearing loss. A stepwise multiple linear regression approach was used to examine the contribution of several factors to 1) absolute performance in each filter condition and 2) the change in performance with the addition of amplified high-and low-frequency speech components.Results-Results from the regression analysis showed that degree of hearing loss was the strongest predictor of absolute performance for low-and high-pass filtered speech materials. In addition, configuration of hearing loss affected both absolute performance for severely low-pass filtered speech and benefit from extending high-frequency (3534-8976 Hz) bandwidth. Specifically, individuals with steeply sloping high-frequency losses made better use of low-pass filtered speech information than individuals with similar low-frequency thresholds but less highfrequency loss. In contrast, given similar high-frequency thresholds, individuals with flat hearing losses received more benefit from extending high-frequency bandwidth than individuals with more sloping losses.Conclusions-Consistent with previous work, benefit from speech information in a given frequency region generally decreases as degree of hearing loss in that frequency region increases. However, given a similar degree of loss, the configuration of hearing loss also affects the ability to use speech information in different frequency regions. Except for individuals with steeply sloping Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. high-frequency losses, providing high-frequency amplification (3534-8976 Hz) had either a beneficial effect on, or did not significantly degrade, speech understanding. These findings highlight the importance of extended high-frequency amplification for listeners with a wide range of high-frequency hearing losses, when seeking to maximize intelligibility. NIH Public Access

These data suggest that the benefits, and detriments, of activating NFC may be limited for this population.

Objectives The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of background noise and reverberation on listening effort. Four specific research questions were addressed related to listening effort. These questions were: A) with comparable word recognition performance across levels of reverberation, what are the effects of noise and reverberation on listening effort? (B) what is the effect of background noise when reverberation time is constant? (C) what is the effect of increasing reverberation from low to moderate when signal-to-noise ratio is constant? (D) what is the effect of increasing reverberation from moderate to high when signal-to-noise ratio is constant? Design Eighteen young adults (mean age 24.8 years) with normal hearing participated. A dual-task paradigm was used to simultaneously assess word recognition and listening effort. The primary task was monosyllable word recognition and the secondary task was word categorization (press a button if the word heard was judged to be a noun). Participants were tested in quiet and in background noise in three levels of reverberation (T30 < 100 ms, T30 = 475 ms, and T30 = 834 ms). Signal-to-noise ratios used were chosen individually for each participant and varied by reverberation to address the specific research questions. Results As expected, word recognition performance was negatively affected by both background noise and by increases in reverberation. Furthermore, analysis of mean response times revealed that background noise increased listening effort, regardless of degree of reverberation. Conversely, reverberation did not affect listening effort, regardless of whether word recognition performance was comparable or signal-to-noise ratio was constant. Conclusions The finding that reverberation did not affect listening effort, even when word recognition performance was degraded, is inconsistent with current models of listening effort. The reasons for this surprising finding are unclear and warrant further investigation. However, the results of this study are limited in generalizability to young listeners with normal hearing and to the signal-to-noise ratios, loudspeaker to listener distance, and reverberation times evaluated. Other populations, like children, older listeners, and listeners with hearing loss have been previously shown to be more sensitive to reverberation. Therefore, the effects of reverberation for these vulnerable populations also warrant further investigation.

Acquired hearing loss, not increased age, affected emotional responses by reducing the range of subjective ratings and by reducing the reported valence of the highest intensity stimuli. These results have potentially important clinical implications for aural rehabilitation.