Impaired Performance in Noise: Disentangling Listening Effort from the Irrelevant Speech Effect

Noise can reduce the intelligibility of spoken language and increase the effort necessary to understand speech. Listening effort , "the deliberate allocation of mental resources to overcome obstacles in goal pursuit when carrying out a [listening] task" (Pichora-Fuller et al., 2016), is commonly assessed by measuring response times to secondary tasks while listening to speech or by testing memory for the content of...

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This research deepens understanding of noise-related cognitive load but does not yet provide a directly actionable clinical protocol change; however, it supports distinguishing listening effort from distraction effects when counseling patients about real-world hearing difficulty.

Disentangling listening effort from the irrelevant speech effect provides a more precise theoretical framework that could improve how audiologists assess and explain noise-related hearing complaints beyond standard audiometric thresholds.

1. 01Study separates two distinct noise-related impairments: listening effort and the irrelevant speech effect.
2. 02Listening effort reflects increased cognitive load during difficult speech understanding.
3. 03The irrelevant speech effect is an attentional distraction caused by background speech, independent of effort.
4. 04Findings challenge single-construct explanations of noise-impaired performance.
5. 05Published in Collabra: Psychology (DOI: 10.1525/collabra.147319).

PMID

42781367

DOI

10.1525/collabra.147319.

Journal

Collabra: Psychology

Publication type

research_article

Evidence level

2b

Population

Participants performing speech-in-noise listening tasks (population details not specified in abstract)

Intervention

Experimental conditions isolating listening effort vs. irrelevant speech effect during noise exposure

Comparator

Conditions without background noise or with controlled noise types