Dataset Information

A Tipping Point in Listening Effort: Effects of Linguistic Complexity and Age-Related Hearing Loss on Sentence Comprehension.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between effort and performance. Early formulations implied that, as the challenge of a task increases, individuals will exert more effort, with resultant maintenance of stable performance. We report an experiment in which normal-hearing young adults, normal-hearing older adults, and older adults with age-related mild-to-moderate hearing loss were tested for comprehension of recorded sentences that varied the comprehension challenge in two ways. First, sentences were constructed that expressed their meaning either with a simpler subject-relative syntactic structure or a more computationally demanding object-relative structure. Second, for each sentence type, an adjectival phrase was inserted that created either a short or long gap in the sentence between the agent performing an action and the action being performed. The measurement of pupil dilation as an index of processing effort showed effort to increase with task difficulty until a difficulty tipping point was reached. Beyond this point, the measurement of pupil size revealed a commitment of effort by the two groups of older adults who failed to keep pace with task demands as evidenced by reduced comprehension accuracy. We take these pupillometry data as revealing a complex relationship between task difficulty, effort, and performance that might not otherwise appear from task performance alone.

SUBMITTER: Ayasse ND

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6154259 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A Tipping Point in Listening Effort: Effects of Linguistic Complexity and Age-Related Hearing Loss on Sentence Comprehension.

Ayasse Nicole D ND Wingfield Arthur A

Trends in hearing 20180101

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between effort and performance. Early formulations implied that, as the challenge of a task increases, individuals will exert more effort, with resultant maintenance of stable performance. We report an experiment in which normal-hearing young adults, normal-hearing older adults, and older adults with age-related mild-to-moderate hearing loss were tested for comprehension of recorded sentences that varied the comprehension cha ...[more]

PMID: 30235973

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Project description:Current evidence demonstrates that even though some non-native listeners can achieve native-like performance for speech perception tasks in quiet, the presence of a background noise is much more detrimental to speech intelligibility for non-native compared to native listeners. Even when performance is equated across groups, it is likely that greater listening effort is required for non-native listeners. Importantly, the added listening effort might result in increased fatigue and a reduced ability to successfully perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Task-evoked pupil responses have been demonstrated to be a reliable measure of cognitive effort and can be useful in clarifying those aspects. In this study we compared the pupil response for 23 native English speakers and 27 Italian speakers of English as a second language. Speech intelligibility was tested for sentences presented in quiet and in background noise at two performance levels that were matched across groups. Signal-to-noise levels corresponding to these sentence intelligibility levels were pre-determined using an adaptive intelligibility task. Pupil response was significantly greater in non-native compared to native participants across both intelligibility levels. Therefore, for a given intelligibility level, a greater listening effort is required when listening in a second language in order to understand speech in noise. Results also confirmed that pupil response is sensitive to speech intelligibility during language comprehension, in line with previous research. However, contrary to our predictions, pupil response was not differentially modulated by intelligibility levels for native and non-native listeners. The present study corroborates that pupillometry can be deemed as a valid measure to be used in speech perception investigation, because it is sensitive to differences both across participants, such as listener type, and across conditions, such as variations in the level of speech intelligibility. Importantly, pupillometry offers us the possibility to uncover differences in listening effort even when those do not emerge in the performance level of individuals.

Project description:IntroductionIn the UK, it is estimated that a disabling hearing loss (HL) affects 1 in 6 people. HL has functional, economic and social-emotional consequences for affected individuals. Intervention for HL focuses on improving access to the auditory signal using hearing aids or cochlear implants. However, even if sounds are audible and speech is understood, individuals with HL often report increased effort when listening.Listening effort (LE) may be measured using self-reported measures such as patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). PROMs are validated questionnaires completed by patients to measure their perceptions of their own functional status and well-being. When selecting a PROM for use in research or clinical practice, it is necessary to appraise the evidence of a PROM's acceptability to patients, validity, responsiveness and reliability.Methods and analysisA systematic review of studies evaluating the measurement properties of PROMs available to measure LE in HL will be undertaken. MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychINFO and Web of Science will be searched electronically. Reference lists of included studies, key journals and the grey literature will be hand-searched to identify further studies for inclusion. Two reviewers will independently complete title, abstract and full-text screening to determine study eligibility. Data on the characteristics of each study and each PROM will be extracted. Methodological quality of the included studies will be appraised using the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments, the quality of included PROMs appraised and the credibility of the evidence assessed. A narrative synthesis will summarise extracted data.Ethics and disseminationEthical permission is not required, as this study uses data from published research. Dissemination will be through publication in peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations and the lead author's doctoral dissertation. Findings may inform the selection of PROMs used to measure LE in HL.

Project description:Determining mechanism-based biomarkers that distinguish adaptive and adverse cellular processes is critical to understanding the health effects of environmental exposures. Shifting from in vivo, low-throughput toxicity studies to high-throughput screening (HTS) paradigms and risk assessment based on in vitro and in silico testing requires utilizing toxicity pathway information to distinguish adverse outcomes from recoverable adaptive events. Little work has focused on oxidative stresses in human airway for the purposes of predicting adverse responses. We hypothesize that early gene expression-mediated molecular changes could be used to delineate adaptive and adverse responses to environmentally-based perturbations. Here, we examined cellular responses of the tracheobronchial airway to zinc (Zn) exposure, a model oxidant. Airway derived BEAS-2B cells exposed to 2–10 µM Zn2+ elicited concentration- and time-dependent cytotoxicity. Normal, adaptive, and cytotoxic Zn2+ exposure conditions were determined with traditional apical endpoints, and differences in global gene expression around the tipping point of the responses were used to delineate underlying molecular mechanisms. Bioinformatic analyses of differentially expressed genes indicate early enrichment of stress signaling pathways, including those mediated by the transcription factors p53 and NRF2. After 4 h, 154 genes were differentially expressed (p <0.01) between the adaptive and cytotoxic Zn2+ concentrations. Nearly 40% of the biomarker genes were related to the p53 signaling pathway with 30 genes identified as likely direct targets using a database of p53 ChIP-seq studies. Despite similar p53 activation profiles, these data revealed widespread dampening of p53 and NRF2-related genes as early as 4 h after exposure at higher, unrecoverable Zn2+ exposures. Thus, in our model early increased activation of stress response pathways indicated a recoverable adaptive event. Overall, this study highlights the importance of characterizing molecular mechanisms around the tipping point of adverse responses to better inform HTS paradigms.

Dataset Information

A Tipping Point in Listening Effort: Effects of Linguistic Complexity and Age-Related Hearing Loss on Sentence Comprehension.

Publications

A Tipping Point in Listening Effort: Effects of Linguistic Complexity and Age-Related Hearing Loss on Sentence Comprehension.

Similar Datasets

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