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Cochlear Implants and Listening Effort: the Interaction of Cognitive and Sensory Constraints
Sponsor: NYU Langone Health
Summary
This study examines how cochlear implant users understand and comprehend speech in realistic communication situations. Through six experiments measuring listening effort via pupillometry and discourse comprehension, we will investigate how linguistic context, cognitive demands, and processing time affect speech understanding in CI users, and in normal-hearing controls) to identify factors underlying communication resilience versus vulnerability and develop improved, ecologically valid assessment and rehabilitation strategies.
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
18 Years - 80 Years
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
460
Start Date
2025-01-02
Completion Date
2030-01-02
Last Updated
2025-12-12
Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Conditions
Interventions
Experiment 1: Syntactic and Semantic Context
* Recall of meaningful sentences, anomalous word strings, and unstructured word lists * Measurement of syntactic and semantic gain * Pupillometry during auditory and visual presentation
Experiment 2: False Hearing and Context Overuse
* Two-choice word recognition task with semantic priming/luring in multi-talker babble * Three Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) levels (heavy, medium, light noise) * Confidence ratings for responses * Pupillometry measurement
Experiment 3: Two-Sentence Problem
* Speech recognition and recall of single sentences vs. paired sentences * Manipulation of inter-sentence semantic predictability (high vs. low) * Four test conditions: 1-sentence, 2-sentences, 2-sentences+pre-prompt, 2-sentences+post-prompt * Pupillometry during task
Experiment 4: Cascading Effects on Discourse Comprehension
* Recall of 27 narrative passages (67-97 words each) * Propositional analysis scoring (main ideas, mid-level ideas, details) * Measurement of semantic hierarchy effect * Pupillometry during listening
Experiment 5: Self-Paced Discourse Comprehension
* 24 discourse passages (150 words each): 12 narrative, 12 expository * Continuous presentation vs. self-paced presentation (stops at clause/sentence boundaries) * Measurement of pause times and comprehension recall * Pupillometry during task
Experiment 6: Clinical Application
* Self-Paced Sentence Comprehension * Sentences with varying syntactic complexity (active-conjoined, subject-relative, object-relative) * Continuous vs. self-paced (with pause at major clause boundary) presentation * True/false comprehension verification statements * Pupillometry measurement
Locations (2)
Brandeis University
Waltham, Massachusetts, United States
NYU Langone Health
New York, New York, United States