Evaluation of listening effort in individuals with unilateral hearing loss

Individuals with unilateral profound hearing loss may not experience difficulty in optimal listening conditions, but they may experience increased effort and fatigue in understanding speech in challenging listening situations in daily life.This study aims to evaluate speech perception in noise and listening effort in individuals with unilateral profound hearing loss. We also aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Contralateral Routing of Signals (CROS) hearing aid and bone-conduction hearing devices in reducing listening effort, which is proposed to compensate for the hearing difficulties experienced by monaural listeners. For this purpose, 12 individuals aged between 20 and 50 with unilateral profound hearing loss were included in the study. All participants underwent the Turkish Matrix test to assess speech understanding in noise, and dual-task paradigm was used to evaluate listening effort. Results revealed that the use of current amplification systems improved speech perception in noise (p<0.05), while no significant difference was found among the amplification systems (p>0.05). In the listening effort test, a significant difference was found between the unaided condition and the CROS hearing aid condition at -3 dB SNR and 3 dB SNR (p<0.05), while no significant difference was observed with bone-conduction hearing devices (p>0.05). A significant difference was obtained between the unaided condition and the use of both amplifications at 0 dB SNR (p<0.05). However, no significant difference was found among the types of amplification at all SNR (p>0.05). The results indicate that the utilization of the specified amplification systems may enhance speech intelligibility and reduce listening effort in noisy environments. Nevertheless, no conclusive evidence found regarding the comparative effectiveness of these devices within the scope of this assesments.