Extraction of listening effort correlates in the oscillatory EEG activity: Investigation of different hearing aid configurations

A generally accepted objective measure for listening effort in hearing aid fitting procedures is still missing. Thus, the focus of our research is the extraction of possible neural correlates of listening effort by using electroencephalographic data. Such an objective measure could optimize the hearing aid fitting procedures by reducing the listening effort in hearing aid wearers. In the current study, we tested different hearing aid configurations in 15 normal hearing persons. For this, we created a realistic listening situation using standardized sentences embedded in multitalker babble noise at a fixed signal to noise ratio. The main objectives were (i) to extract possible neural correlates of listening effort using the previously proposed angular entropy measure; (ii) to find the respective electrode locations and scales (frequencies) which best represent the subjectively rated listening effort. In order to decompose the multiway data (electrode channel × number of sentences × scales) the parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) was applied to the ANOVA F-test values. The results indicate that the refined angular entropy could serve as a possible correlate of listening effort in frontal electrode locations in the frequency range of the EEG theta band. Anyway further research is necessary to validate these findings.