Listening while balancing: Dual-task costs in speech vs. noise maskers

Abstract

Many middle-aged adults report that listening is effortful in adverse communication situations. One means of quantifying listening effort is by measuring dual-task costs. The present study examined the influence of early aging on dual-task costs using a technique which required participants (younger and middle-aged adults) to complete a postural control task while listening to speech. For the postural control task, participants stood on a force platform and had to maintain their center of pressure within a prescribed area (denoted using real-time visual feedback). Two speech perception tasks were used, each presented with two types of maskers (same-sex two-talker speech masker and steady-state speech-shaped noise): repeating back low-predictability sentences, and listening to Connected Speech Test passages and then answering content questions based on each passage. This presentation will describe data analyses designed to uncover how listener age group and masker type influenced listening effort as measured by dual-task costs. [Work supported by NIDCD 012057.]