TY - JOUR
T1 - Using response time to speech as a measure for listening effort
AU - Houben, Rolph
AU - van Doorn-Bierman, Maaike
AU - Dreschler, Wouter A.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Speech signals that do not differ in intelligibility might differ in listening effort. This study aimed to investigate the effect of background noise on response time to intelligible speech. We added various amounts of stationary noise to spoken digit triplets and measured the influence of noise on the response time for both an identification and an arithmetic task: Task 1 'identify the final digit in a triplet', and Task 2 'calculate the sum of the initial and the final digits in a triplet.' Twelve normal-hearing participants with a mean age of 30.6 years (range: 28-44 years). Response time increased with lower (i.e. worse) signal to noise ratios for both tasks, even for signal to noise ratios with almost maximum intelligibility (close to 100%). The response time during the arithmetic task was more affected by the noise than during the identification task, but the arithmetic task demonstrated higher variance. The response time to digit triplets reduces significantly for increasing signal to noise ratios, even where speech intelligibility is optimal. These differences in response time might be related to listening effort and as such might be used to evaluate hearing-aid signal processing at positive SNRs
AB - Speech signals that do not differ in intelligibility might differ in listening effort. This study aimed to investigate the effect of background noise on response time to intelligible speech. We added various amounts of stationary noise to spoken digit triplets and measured the influence of noise on the response time for both an identification and an arithmetic task: Task 1 'identify the final digit in a triplet', and Task 2 'calculate the sum of the initial and the final digits in a triplet.' Twelve normal-hearing participants with a mean age of 30.6 years (range: 28-44 years). Response time increased with lower (i.e. worse) signal to noise ratios for both tasks, even for signal to noise ratios with almost maximum intelligibility (close to 100%). The response time during the arithmetic task was more affected by the noise than during the identification task, but the arithmetic task demonstrated higher variance. The response time to digit triplets reduces significantly for increasing signal to noise ratios, even where speech intelligibility is optimal. These differences in response time might be related to listening effort and as such might be used to evaluate hearing-aid signal processing at positive SNRs
U2 - https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2013.832415
DO - https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2013.832415
M3 - Article
C2 - 24053226
SN - 1499-2027
VL - 52
SP - 753
EP - 761
JO - International Journal of Audiology
JF - International Journal of Audiology
IS - 11
ER -