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Purpose

Fitting a cochlear implant (CI) for optimal speech perception does not necessarily optimize listening effort. This study aimed to show that listening effort may change between CI processing conditions for which speech intelligibility remains constant.

Method

Nineteen normal-hearing participants listened to CI simulations with varying numbers of spectral channels. A dual-task paradigm combining an intelligibility task with either a linguistic or nonlinguistic visual response-time (RT) task measured intelligibility and listening effort. The simultaneously performed tasks compete for limited cognitive resources; changes in effort associated with the intelligibility task are reflected in changes in RT on the visual task. A separate self-report scale provided a subjective measure of listening effort.

Results

All measures showed significant improvements with increasing spectral resolution up to 6 channels. However, only the RT …