Listening effort: Separating the subjective from the objective
Abstract
Challenges such as background noise may increase “listening effort.” This construct has been operationalized as the recruitment of cognitive resources during listening (objective effort) or as the self-reported feeling of effort (subjective effort). In the current study, I compared these two dimensions of listening effort directly. Normal-hearing adults listened to highly intelligible passages across several signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), with reaction time on a secondary task (objective effort) and effort ratings (subjective effort) measured in separate blocks. As the SNR became less favourable, subjective effort appeared to increase continuously, while objective effort only began to increase at a much less favourable SNR. This suggests that although listening effort increases with cognitive demand, these two dimensions may respond differently. However, the greater responsiveness of subjective effort may be due to participants rating the difficulty rather than effort. Further, listening effort appeared to increase before speech intelligibility decreased, suggesting that effort helps maintain intelligibility.