Dynamic allocation of listening effort when listening to speech

Measuring listening effort is an essential part of understanding the communication ability of a person with hearing loss. In this study, we are using pupillometry to measure how listener effort changes over the course of an utterance, in cases where the listener has reason to allocate effort earlier or later in time. Listeners completed a sentence-recognition task where high- or low-context sentences were followed by various stimuli (noise/digit sequences/speech) or silence. In cases where listeners can “restore” misperceived words with the aid of context, we see significant late-occurring reductions in pupil size when a sentence is followed by silence. This alleviation of cognitive activity is shown to be systematically disrupted by sounds (noise or speech) that are played after the end of the sentence. Furthermore, we show evidence of reallocation of effort earlier in time in cases where that disruption is expected. This underscores a largely underappreciated challenge in auditory perception, which is n...