Multimodal Physiological Responses During Sentence Recognition at Individualized Speech-in-Noise Thresholds

By individualizing speech-in-noise level, one can aim to compare physiological responses near a comparable recognition level across listeners with different hearing abilities. We examined whether the aim was realized and whether pupil diameter, skin conductance, and photoplethysmography-derived heartrate provided usable responses during sentence recognition....

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No actionable clinical change — this is a foundational physiological study; findings may eventually support objective measures of listening effort but are not yet ready to inform clinical practice.

Identifying reliable physiological markers of listening effort during speech-in-noise tasks could one day enable objective, non-self-reported assessment of hearing difficulty, benefiting both diagnostics and hearing aid fitting.

1. 01Measured multiple physiological signals simultaneously during a speech-in-noise (understanding speech in a noisy room) task.
2. 02Testing was conducted at each listener's individualized speech-in-noise threshold — the difficulty level tailored to each person.
3. 03Participants had varying levels of hearing ability, enabling comparison across hearing profiles.
4. 04Explores physiological correlates of listening effort, a growing area of audiology research.
5. 05Multimodal approach (combining several body measures) is the key methodological contribution.

PMID

42944475

DOI

10.3390/s26206613.

Journal

Sensors

Publication type

research_article

Evidence level

2b

Population

Listeners with varying hearing abilities (normal hearing and hearing impaired adults)

Intervention

Sentence recognition task at individualized speech-in-noise thresholds with multimodal physiological monitoring

Comparator

Listeners with varying hearing abilities serving as within-study comparison groups