Quantifying the Effects of Motivation on Listening Effort: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Motivation influences the amount of listening effort (LE) exerted or experienced under challenging conditions, such as in high-noise environments. This systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to quantify the effects of motivation on LE. The review was pre-registered in PROSPERO, and performed in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Eligible studies examined the influence of motivation or individual traits (related to motivation) on LE in adults. Motivational factors, coded as independent variables, included financial reward, evaluative threat, perceived competence, feedback and individual traits. LE outcomes were categorised as subjective, behavioural or physiological. The quality of evidence was assessed using an adaptation of the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias Tool. Nested random-effects meta-analyses were performed to quantify and compare the influence of motivational factors across LE outcomes. After assessing 3532 records, 48 studies met the inclusion criteria and 43 were included in the meta-analyses. Risk of bias was high e.g. many studies lacked sample size justification. Motivational factors had a small-to-medium effect (mean Cohen’s d = 0.34, range: 0.11 – 0.72) on LE. When LE outcomes were considered collectively, an external manipulation of motivation (perceived competence) produced a larger mean effect size compared with individual traits. Some combinations of motivational factors and LE outcomes produced more robust effects than others, e.g. evaluative threat and subjective LE outcomes. Although wide prediction intervals and high risk of bias mean that significant positive effects cannot be guaranteed, these findings provide useful guidance on the selection of motivational factors and LE outcomes for future research.

Eye movements decrease during effortful speech listening

“…We calculated Pearson correlations between the difference in pupil area and the difference in fixation duration and gaze dispersion, but no significant correlation was found (fixation duration: r = 0.103, p = 0.647; gaze dispersion: r = -0.256, p = 0.250), perhaps suggesting somewhat independent processes. Finally, the SNR effect (-2 dB minus +8 dB SNR) for behavioral performance did not correlate with the SNR effect for pupil area, fixation duration, nor gaze dispersion (fixation duration: r = -0.005, p = 0.822; gaze dispersion: r = -0.202, p = 0.368; pupil area: r = 0.377, p = 0.084), suggesting effort measures and behavioral performance dissociate to some extent (in line with Koelewijn et al, 2018;Carolan et al, 2022).…”

A Within-Subject Comparison of Hearing Aid Performance in Noise Based on Verbal Response Times

“…In recent work, Carolan et al [20] pointed out that behavioral measures, such as VRTs, may indicate when an individual's resource capacity is under strain or exceeded, allowing inferences to be made about listening effort. Increased effort may manifest as slower response times due to longer processing time, but they flagged that this needed to be considered carefully because the relationship between listening effort and response time depends on the experimental context.…”