Abstract
Listening amidst competing noise taxes one's limited cognitive resources, leading
to increased listening effort. As such, there is interest in incorporating a reliable
test of listening effort into the clinical test battery. One clinically promising
method for measuring listening effort is verbal response time (VRT) because it can
be obtained using already-established clinical tasks. In order for widespread implementation
of the VRT paradigm, a better understanding of the psychometric properties is needed.
The purpose of this work was to improve the understanding of the reliability and sensitivity
of the VRT listening task. Using within-subject study designs, we completed a pilot
study to evaluate the test–retest reliability (Study 1) and the effects of task instructions
and listening condition (Study 2). Preliminary results show that the VRT paradigm
enjoys good to excellent test–retest reliability and that neither task instructions
nor listening condition meaningfully influence VRT once measurement error is accounted
for. Future studies should account for measurement error when considering statistically
significant versus meaningful effects of experimental parameters when using listening
effort tasks.
Keywords
listening effort - task instructions - verbal response time - test–retest reliability
