Objective: Previous behavioral studies on listening effort in tinnitus patients did not consider extended high‐frequency hearing thresholds and had conflicting results. This inconsistency may be related that listening effort is not evaluated by the central nervous system (CNS) and autonomic nervous system (ANS), which are directly related to tinnitus pathophysiology. This study matches hearing thresholds at all frequencies, including the extended high‐frequency and reduces hearing loss to objectively evaluate listening effort over the CNS and ANS simultaneously in tinnitus patients.Study Design: Case‐control study.Setting: University hospital.Methods: Sixteen chronic tinnitus patients and 23 matched healthy controls having normal pure‐tone averages with symmetrical hearing thresholds were included. Subjects were evaluated with 0.125 to 20 kHz pure‐tone audiometry, Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MoCA), Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), Visual Analog Scale (VAS), electroencephalography (EEG), and pupillometry.Results: Pupil dilation and EEG alpha band in the “coding” phase of the sentence presented in tinnitus patients was less than in the control group (p < .05). VAS score was higher in the tinnitus group (p < .01). Also, there was no statistically significant relationship between EEG and pupillometry components and THI or MoCA (p > .05).Conclusion: This study suggests that tinnitus patients may need to make an extra effort to listen. Also, pupillometry may not be sufficiently reliable to assess listening effort in ANS‐related pathologies. Considering the possible listening difficulties in tinnitus patients, reducing the listening difficulties, especially in noisy environments, can be added to the goals of tinnitus therapy protocols.

Background Listening effort is primarily reflective of real-world performance. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the listening effort to predict the performance of hearing aid (HA) users in their daily lives. Purpose This study aimed to investigate the relationship between listening effort, daily HA use time, and HA satisfaction. Research Design This is a cross-sectional study. Study Sample Thirty-three bilateral behind-the-ear HA users (17 females and 16 males) between 19 and 37 years were participated. All participants had bilateral, symmetric, moderate sensorineural hearing loss and at least 6 months of experience using HAs. The pure-tone average thresholds (PTA) of the participants' left and right ears were 55.34 ± 4.38 and 54.85 ± 5.05, respectively. Data Collection and Analysis First, daily HA use times of the last 30 days were derived from data logging. Second, participants were asked to fill in the Satisfaction with Amplification in Daily Life Scale questionnaire (SADL). Lastly, participants performed the dual-task paradigm to evaluate listening effort. The dual-task paradigm consisted of a primary speech recognition task that included three different individualized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions, that is, SNR100, SNR80, and SNR50, which the participant could understand 100, 80, and 50% of the speech, respectively. The secondary task was a visual reaction time task that required participants to press the key in response to a visual probe (an image of a white or red rectangle). Multiple linear regression analyses were used to model the effect of factors (daily HA use time and HA satisfaction) on reaction times (RT) of each three individualized SNR sessions. Results Mean daily HA use time of the participants was 5.72 ± 4.14 hours. Mean RTs of SNR50, SNR80, and SNR100 conditions were 1,050.61 ± 286.49, 893.33 ± 274.79, and 815.45 ± 233.22 ms, respectively. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that daily HA use time and HA satisfaction are significantly related to listening effort in all SNR conditions. For SNR80 condition; F (2,30) = 47.699, p < 0.001, with an adjusted R ² of 0.745. Conclusion As far as we know, this study is the first to demonstrate a strong link between listening effort, daily HA use time, and HA satisfaction. Evaluating listening effort following the HA fitting session may provide preliminary information about the treatment success of HA.

Background: It is still not fully explained what kind of cognitive sources the methods used in the assessment of listening effort are more sensitive to and how these measurement results are related to each other. The aim of the study is to ascertain which neural resources crucial for listening effort are most sensitive to objective measurement methods using differently degraded speech stimuli.Methods: A total of 49 individuals between the ages of 19 and 34 with normal hearing participated in the study. In the first stage, simultaneous pupillometry, electroencephalogram (EEG), and single‐task paradigm reaction time (RT) measurements were made during the challenging listening and repetition task with noise‐vocoded speech. Two speech reception thresholds (SRT) (50% and 80%) for two vocoding conditions (16 and 6 channels) were collected, resulting in 4 conditions. In the second stage, the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and the test of attention in listening (TAIL) were applied. Stepwise linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictors of listening effort measurements.Results: A significant difference was found between 6 and 16 channel stimuli in both pupil dilation change and EEG alpha band power change. In the hardest listening condition, whereas RAVLT scores are significant predictors of pupil dilation change, TAIL scores are significant predictors of EEG alpha power. As the stimulus difficulty decreased, the factors that predicted both EEG and pupillometry results decreased. In the single‐task paradigm, a significant regression model could not be obtained at all four difficulty levels.Conclusion: As a result of the study, it was found that the pupil dilation change was more sensitive to auditory memory skills and the EEG alpha power change was more sensitive to auditory attention skills. To our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the sensitivity of different listening effort measurement methods to auditory cognitive skills.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to longitudinally investigate the effects of using CROS/BiCROS hearing aids on the listening effort and speech perception in noise skills of individuals with single‐sided deafness (SSD).Methods: Nineteen people with SSD who were going to use CROS/BiCROS hearing aids for the first time participated in the study. Participants were evaluated before they started using hearing aids and after 1 week, 3, and 6 months after they started using them. In every session, a dual‐task paradigm was applied to measure listening effort, and the Turkish Matrix Test (TM) was applied to measure speech understanding performance in noise. The dual‐task paradigm was evaluated at three different individual signal‐to‐noise ratios (SNR) determined according to the subjects' TM performance. Repeated measures ANOVA tests were used to evaluate whether the participants' dual‐task paradigm and TM performances differed according to sessions.Results: A significant difference was observed between both the dual‐task paradigm and TM scores according to measurement time (p < 0.001). In pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni corrections, it was observed that there was a significant difference between all periods (p < 0.001). While the dual‐task paradigm reaction times obtained in all three difficult listening conditions were highest before using the device, they were lowest at the sixth‐month evaluation.Conclusion: This is the first study to longitudinally examine how CROS/BiCROS hearing aid use affects both speech‐in‐noise ability and listening effort. As a result of this study, it was seen that the use of CROS/BiCROS increased speech understanding performance in noise and reduced listening effort after starting to use them. Furthermore, as the use of the device continued, it was observed that speech performance in noise increased and listening effort decreased over time.