AVATAR Assesses Speech Understanding and Multitask Costs in Ecologically Relevant Listening Situations

Conclusions: AVATAR proved to be a promising model to assess speech intelligibility and auditory localization abilities and to gauge the amount of processing resources during effortful listening in ecologically relevant multitasking situations by means of multitask costs. In contrast with current clinical measures of auditory functioning, results showed that listening and multitasking in challenging listening environments can require a considerable amount of processing resources, even for young normal-hearing adults. Furthermore, the allocation of resources increased in more demanding listening situations. These findings open avenues for a more realistic assessment of auditory functioning and individually tuned auditory rehabilitation for individuals of different age and hearing profiles.
Source: Ear and Hearing - Category: Audiology Tags: Research Article Source Type: research