Preferred Name
Jamilah Odeh
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Date of Graduation
5-15-2025
Semester of Graduation
Spring
Degree Name
Doctor of Audiology (AuD)
Department
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
First Advisor
Lincoln Gray
Second Advisor
Ayasakanta Rout
Third Advisor
Yingjiu Nie
Abstract
Listening effort refers to the mental exertion required to attend to and understand auditory information, especially in challenging or noisy environments. Measuring listening effort is complex due to its variability across individuals and tasks and is even more pronounced in neurodiverse (ND) populations, yet few studies have examined listening effort in these groups. This study aims to investigate perceived mental workload in both neurotypical (NT) and ND listeners across two distracting and one quiet listening task. It also evaluated correlations between subjective and objective scores, specifically whether greater perceived effort yielded better thresholds. Sixty-five healthy adults aged 18 - 25 participated: 19 identified as NT, 11 suspected ADHD, and 26 with a confirmed ADHD diagnosis. Participants completed three listening tasks in random order: (1) Speech-on-Speech Masking (SoSM) across three difficulty levels, (2) Informational Masking (IM), following Alexander & Lufti, repeated 8 times, and (3) Thresholds-in-Quiet (QT) using the 11 tones from IM task. After each task, participants rated their perceived effort using the NASA Task Load Index (TLX). No single subjective score differentiated NTs from NDs. However, a combination of measures – frustration, perceived time pressure, and performance anxiety in the two distracting tasks did reveal differences. While individual subjective ratings may lack sensitivity to some neurodivergent traits, derived metrics that relate subjective and objective performance, “Gain per Effort” and “Grit”, showed distinct group differences. Gain per Effort, was normalized thresholds (positive = better performance) divided by subjective effort, significantly separated NTs from NDs in the SoSM task only; NTs demonstrating greater objective gains per unit of effort. Grit, is the TLX score divided by a final false alarm rate, a measure of ‘trying hard’. Grit is also greater in NTs than NDs. All subjective scores of effort are related, more than expected by chance, suggesting task load reflects individual traits. While no single score distinguished neurotypes, combined measures did. Importantly, Gain per Effort and Grit, captured performance differences associated with ADHD, supporting the need to integrate subjective and objective data when assessing effects on listening effort in ND populations.
