Time course of individual listening effort in the first year of cochlear implant provision

Indications for and evaluation after cochlear implant provision are primarily based on speech comprehension tests. In addition, however, there is an increasing demand for measurement procedures for everyday use, e.g. for subjectively perceived hearing effort. ACALES (adaptive categorial listening effort scaling) is a standardized method for measuring subjective listening effort. It automatically offers a speech signal with noise from the Oldenburg sentence test, whereby the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is varied adaptively. The patient's subjective assessment ranges from "effortless" to "extremely effortful".

We have longitudinally examined 58 patients who underwent CI provision. As expected, the subjectively perceived listening effort in the longitudinal course showed large interindividual differences. On average, the hearing effort was significantly reduced after 3 months. Nearly all patients achieved an improvement in their individual hearing effort after 6 months at the latest compared to best aided preoperatively. The hearing effort in the group of bimodal patients was significantly higher than in the SSD group preoperatively (best aided) and up to 6 months postoperatively. After one year, an almost identical listening effort was observed between both groups.

ACALES seems to be a reliable and easy to perform method to determine the subjective auditory effort in CI patients. The recording of individual listening effort with ACALES can supplement the classical speech tests with a component of subjective everyday use.

Poster-PDF A-1667.pdf

Publication History

Article published online:
13 May 2021