A model of listening engagement (MoLE)

Abstract

Hearing impairment in older adulthood puts people at risk of communication difficulties, disengagement from listening, and social withdrawal. Here, we develop a model of listening engagement (MoLE) that provides a conceptual foundation to understand when people engage in listening and why some people disengage. We use the term "listening engagement" to describe the recruitment of executive and other cognitive resources in the service of a valued communication goal. Listening engagement, listening motivation, and listening experiences are closely interconnected: motivation and other factors determine the degree to which resources are recruited during listening, which in turn influences subjective listening experiences such as enjoyment, effort, frustration, and boredom. We anticipate that this model will help researchers assess more accurately whether a person with hearing difficulties is at risk of disengagement and social withdrawal. It is further useful to more comprehensively characterize a person's listening experiences in laboratory settings when rich, engaging stimulus materials, such as spoken stories, are used. We hope this model will allow new questions in applied and basic hearing science and auditory cognitive neuroscience to be asked and answered.

Personality captures dissociations of subjective versus objective hearing in noise

“…Some positive associations were found for neuroticism and selfreported (Boyes & French, 2010), as well as physiological measures of effort (Mandell et al, 2015). In the context of hearing, the allocation of cognitive resources is referred to as expended listening effort or listening engagement (Herrmann & Johnsrude, 2020;Peelle, 2018;Picou et al, 2016).…”

Neural activity during story listening is synchronized across individuals despite acoustic masking

“…In contrast, everyday listening situations involve speech material comprised of sentences that relate to each other, and that are interesting to the listener. Such listening situations are commonly subject to increased levels of background noise, but are also rich with many positive aspects of listening that may drive motivation to listen (Matthen, 2016; Herrmann and Johnsrude, 2020b). Similarly, the spoken stories used here are intrinsically motivating to a listener, reflecting such everyday listening situations (Dunlop and Walker, 2013).…”

“…However, social isolation is likely subsequent to within-situation disengagement; a coping mechanism to reduce cognitive demand. A person may temporarily “zone out” in conversational situations because continuous listening is too difficult (Heffernan et al, 2016; Herrmann and Johnsrude, 2020a, 2020b). A greater understanding of the listening conditions under which a person may disengage, and development of quantitative measures of within-situation disengagement, may improve our ability to diagnose hearing problems before social isolation manifests.…”

“…An individual may disengage if they believe speech comprehension will be impossible (Eckert et al, 2016; Richter, 2016; Peelle, 2018). Second, a person who is intrinsically motivated to listen, for example, because they enjoy a conversation (Matthen, 2016), may engage in listening despite background sound (Pichora-Fuller et al, 2016; Herrmann and Johnsrude, 2020b). However, typical investigations of speech comprehension involve listening to isolated sentences (Davis and Johnsrude, 2003; Duncan and Aarts, 2006; Obleser et al, 2007) that lack a topical thread and are not very interesting (e.g., He buttoned his shirt).…”

Understanding Speech amid the Jingle and Jangle: Recommendations for Improving Measurement Practices in Listening Effort Research

“…Is listening effort speech-specific or can it occur when listening to other auditory signals (e.g., music)? Is effort an experience or the mental act of recruiting resources (see Herrmann & Johnsrude, 2020)? Thus, the first challenge researchers face is making a decision about which of the many definitions best describes their intended construct.…”