Evaluation of listening effort and auditory attention in children with specific learning disability

It is stated that attention deficits, speech processing difficulties and auditory processing disorders are frequently observed together in children diagnosed with specific learning disability (SLD). In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the ability of children with SLD to understand speech in noise, auditory attention and listening effort which is assumed to reflect the cognitive skills and ability to divide attention, and to compare them with normal children. In addition, it is aimed to examine the relationship between the results obtained from the ability to understand speech in noise, auditory attention and listening effort test. For this purpose, 23 children diagnosed with SLD between the ages of 7-12 were included in the study group, and 23 normal children between the ages of 7-12 were included in the control group. TURSIMAT to assess ability to understand speech in noise, Listening Effort Test with Dual Task Paradigm to assess listening effort, and TAIL to assess auditory attention was applied to all children participating in the study and the results were compared. Relationships between TURSIMAT, TAIL, Listening Effort Test and age were also examined. As a result of the study, there was no significant difference between the two groups in the TURSIMAT test, while a significant difference was found in the TAIL and Listening Effort Test (p<0.05). While no significant relationship was found between the TURSIMAT test and TAIL and Listening Effort Test in bilateral conditions, a partially significant relationship was found in unilateral conditions (p<0.05). A significant correlation was found between TAIL and Listening Effort test only in the middle condition (p<0.05). In addition, while a significant relationship was obtained between age and all conditions of TURSIMAT and the difficult and medium condition in the Listening Effort Test (p<0.05), no significant relationship was found between age and TAIL test. The findings show that children with SLD have more listening effort and weaker auditory attention skills compared to normal children.