Longitudinal assessment of the hearing effort of CI patients using ACALES

In addition to the classical speech intelligibility tests, measurement methods for everyday use are increasingly required. One aspect here is the subjectively perceived hearing effort, which is very relevant for many cochlear implant (CI) patients, especially in noise.

ACALES (adaptive categorial listening effort scaling) is a standardized method for measuring subjective hearing effort. Here, a speech signal with noise from the Oldenburg sentence test is automatically offered, whereby the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is adaptively varied. The patient is asked for a subjective assessment from "effortless" to "extremely effortful".

Here we present the results of a longitudinally investigated group of CI patients who were treated bimodally (n=13) or with unilateral deafness (SSD; n=8). The longitudinal course of the hearing effort showed large interindividual differences. As expected, the listening effort in the group of bimodal patients was higher both preoperatively (with hearing aids) and postoperatively than in the group of SSD patients. Almost all patients achieved an improvement of their individual listening effort after 6 months at the latest compared to preoperatively best aided.

Based on the experience gained here, ACALES appears to be a reliable and easy to use method for determining the subjective listening effort in CI patients. The assessment of individual listening effort with ACALES can complement the classical speech tests.

Poster-PDF A-1821.PDF

Publication History

Article published online:
10 June 2020