Reduced eye movement when trying to listen in loud noise
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They found that eye movements were reduced under difficult listening conditions compared to favorable listening conditions, i.e. when a story was difficult to understand because of background noise. [사진= 게티이미지뱅크]More and more people suffer from hearing loss as they age. Age-related hearing loss most often occurs in adults over the age of 65, but hearing loss can occur much earlier in the 40s and 50s. However, existing diagnostic techniques may fail to detect early signs of hearing loss, such as the loss of the ability to understand speech in noisy environments. So researchers are focusing their attention on developing diagnostics that can detect subtle forms of hearing loss before they become irreversible.
In this regard, a research team in neuroscience at the Rotman Research Institute in Canada explored the relationship between listening effort and eye movement. This study suggests that eye movement tends to decrease when more effort is put into listening.
“Hearing loss is usually diagnosed with pure-tone audiometry, which measures the hearing threshold for hearing the smallest sounds,” said co-author Bjorn Hermann. He said, “If you have a high hearing threshold, it means that you can hear sound only when the intensity of the sound is relatively high, so there is a possibility that a hearing aid will be prescribed.” added. Beginning in their 40s or 50s, many people begin to have difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments such as crowded restaurants, shopping malls and public places. This hearing loss can often be a precursor to more severe hearing loss that occurs later.
“Existing tests do not accurately reveal these speech recognition disorders in the early stages of hearing loss,” said Hermann. “As a result, hearing loss is often diagnosed 10 to 20 years after the first signs of speech recognition disorders appear.
The research team is working to develop additional diagnostic tools that can better capture the subtleties of hearing to identify hearing loss early. These include physiological signs suggesting an effort to understand speech in noisy environments. This is because physiological responses can be measured objectively, not subjective judgments of effort to listen. Being able to confirm this could help both patients who are receiving treatment for hearing loss and new patients.
Past studies have noted several physiological responses that occur when humans listen attentively. Often referred to is a change in pupil size. For example, it is well known that when we make a cognitive effort to listen, our pupils enlarge. However, the test results may not be accurate due to problems such as the pupil being very sensitive to changes in light.
The new study sought to find an alternative strategy. “There are studies in the non-auditory field that show that eye movements can occur during cognitive efforts, such as remembering large numbers, for example,” said Hermann. We wanted to know if it revealed a cognitive challenge,” he said.
The research team conducted a series of experiments with 26 people between the ages of 18 and 35. The goal was to determine whether eye movement decreased while participants were trying to listen. They used a device that could track eye movements as participants looked at a computer screen while listening to the story using headphones. A variety of speeches were played through the headphones, including a story that required a lot of effort to understand the speech due to heavy background noise.
As a result of the analysis, it was found that eye movements were reduced under difficult listening conditions, i.e. when it was difficult to understand a story due to background noise, compared to favorable listening conditions. “This is the first study to show that listening effort is associated with reduced eye movement,” said Hermann.
This study demonstrates the potential value of attempts to use eye movement recordings to identify hearing impairment. In the future, these methods could be used to create new tests to detect hearing loss in clinical settings.
The study was published in the journal ≪The Journal of Neuroscience≫. The original title is ‘Eye Movements Decrease during Effortful Speech Listening’.
2023-09-07 18:38:47
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