Contribution
Evaluating Mobile EEG Outcomes for Real-World Listening Effort Estimation
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Listening in noisy environments can be fatiguing, particularly for individuals with hearing impairment. Compared to those with normal hearing, hearing-impaired listeners may need to allocate additional cognitive resources to comprehend and attend to sounds in complex acoustic conditions. To identify effortful listening situations and strategies to mitigate them, reliable metrics for assessing listening effort are essential. One promising approach for an objective measurement method is electroencephalography (EEG). However, most EEG studies rely on stationary setups, which are typically used to minimize movement artifacts. Such setups can compromise ecological validity. This study aimed to evaluate listening effort predictors and the feasibility of using mobile EEG to objectively estimate listening effort in realistic scenarios by comparing EEG based listening effort metrics, local connectivity and power, subjective ratings, and previous data from controlled setups. In the experiment, 15 normal hearing participants listened to audiobooks under various signal-to-noise conditions in a living room-like environment. Mobile EEG data were recorded while participants were either sitting or standing. The results suggest that mobile EEG measures can be related to listening effort, supporting its potential as a tool for assessing listening effort in everyday listening environments.