A Novel Communication Value Task Demonstrates Evidence of Response Bias in Cases with Presbyacusis

Mark A Eckert,Brandon S Bentzley,Susan Teubner-Rhodes,Kenneth I Vaden

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-16673-y

Mark A Eckert, Brandon S Bentzley + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-16673-y

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Abstract

Decision-making about the expected value of an experience or behavior can explain hearing health behaviors in older adults with hearing loss. Forty-four middle-aged to older adults (68.45 ± 7.73 years) performed a task in which they were asked to decide whether information from a surgeon or an administrative assistant would be important to their health in hypothetical communication scenarios across visual signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). Participants also could choose to view the briefly presented sentences multiple times. The number of these effortful attempts to read the stimuli served as a measure of demand for information to make a health importance decision. Participants with poorer high frequency hearing more frequently decided that information was important to their health compared to participants with better high frequency hearing. This appeared to reflect a response bias because participants with high frequency hearing loss demonstrated shorter response latencies when they rated the sentences as important to their health. However, elevated high frequency hearing thresholds did not predict demand for information to make a health importance decision. The results highlight the utility of a performance-based measure to characterize effort and expected value from performing tasks in older adults with hearing loss.

Highlights

Extracting meaning from degraded stimuli can be costly or effortful[3,4,5,6,7]
Informed consent was obtainted from forty-seven middle-aged and older adults who participated in this Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Institutional Review Board approved study, which was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki
Participants more frequently rated sentences as “Important” to their health, re-glimpsed a sentence before making a health importance decision, and quit a trial when a sentence was presented in a lower signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) condition (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Extracting meaning from degraded stimuli can be costly or effortful[3,4,5,6,7]. Questionnaires and dual-task measures have been used to characterize this effort. The NASA Task Load Index questionnaire was used to show that older adults experienced significantly less perceived effort during consonant recognition when the stimuli were amplified by hearing aids compared to when the stimuli were not amplified[8]. These measures do not typically characterize the value in performing the task, which may affect the subjective experience of effort[9]. When value is measured with this method, an individual who displays a high value for a reward is sometimes said to have a high demand for that reward[31]

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