Does having control over background noise affect listening effort or speech perception?

Abstract

We have previously shown that individual personality traits, including noise sensitivity, can influence listeners’ assessment of effort and frustration related to noise that interferes with a listening task. Here, we extend our previous research to employ stimuli from a commonly used speech-in-noise task, the coordinate response measure (CRM). On each trial, participants heard a sentence of the form “Ready, CALLSIGN, go to COLOR NUMBER now” presented in a background of steady-state speech-shaped noise. They responded by selecting from a multiple-choice display (two callsigns, four colors, and four numbers). After completing one block of 64 trials with 32 sentences presented at a -4 dB SNR and 32 at -8 dB SNR, half of the participants were allowed to choose to change the noise level, making it either “louder” or “softer” for the next 64 trials. The other participants were assigned to either a louder or softer SNR without a choice. Importantly, half of the trials in the “louder” and “softer” conditions were presented at the same SNR (−6 dB), permitting comparison of performance independently of chosen or assigned difficulty. Results will be discussed in terms of implications for future research on noise sensitivity and long-term health.