Preferred Name
Firdose H.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Date of Graduation
5-2025
Semester of Graduation
Summer
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
First Advisor
Dr. Yingjiu Nie
Second Advisor
Dr. Ayasakanta Rout
Abstract
Listening effort, a cognitive measure reflecting the mental resources required for speech processing, is critical for understanding communication challenges among older adults and individuals with hearing impairment. This study examined how working memory and attention demands interact to influence listening effort in young and older adults with normal hearing. Using a novel dual-task paradigm that simulated real-world cognitive load, participants completed tasks under varying working memory and attention demands while behavioral performance (recall and dichotic scores) and physiological responses (peak pupil dilation) were measured.
Behavioral results revealed significant main effects and interactions between working memory and attention demands on recall and dichotic performance. Increased cognitive load led to decreased accuracy, with evidence of a ceiling effect under high dual-task conditions, supporting theories of limited cognitive capacity. Older adults showed significantly lower dichotic scores than younger adults, indicating age-related differences in attentional processing. In contrast, no significant differences were observed in recall scores across age groups.
Physiological data from pupillometry did not show statistically significant effects, potentially due to limited task difficulty and absence of acoustic challenges. Test–retest analysis demonstrated excellent reliability for behavioral measures but poor reliability for pupil-based indices under high task complexity.
Findings suggest the importance of task design in eliciting measurable listening in complex cognitive tasks. This study highlights the need for more ecologically valid paradigms to better understand cognitive load in everyday listening and provides a foundation for refining research and clinical tools.
