Evaluation of an objective listening effort measure in a selective, multi-speaker listening task using different hearing aid settings

Speaker recognition in a multi-speaker environment is a complex listening task that requires effort to be solved. Especially people with hearing loss show an increased listening effort in demanding listening situations compared to normal hearing people. However, a standardized method to quantify listening effort does not exist yet. Recently we have shown a possible way to determine listening effort objectively. The aim of this study was to validate the proposed objective measure in a challenging, true-to-life listening situation, and to get an insight on the influence of different hearing aid (HA) settings on the listening effort using the proposed measure. To achieve this we investigated the influence of four different HA settings and two different listening task difficulties (LTD) on the listening effort of people with hearing loss in a selective, real-speech listening task. HA setting A, B and C all had an adaptive compression with static characteristic, but differed in the gain and compression settings (more and less gain and more and less linear). Setting D had an adaptive compression whose characteristic was situation-dependent. To quantify the listening effort the ongoing oscillatory EEG activity was recorded as the basis to calculate the objective measure (OLEosc). By way of comparison a subjective listening effort score was determined on an individual basis (SLEscr). The results show that the OLEosc maps the SLEscr well in every of the tested conditions. Furthermore, the results also suggest that OLEosc might be more sensitive to small variances in listening effort than the employed subjective rating scale.