Listening Effort

The term listening effort has been defined as the deliberate allocation of mental resources to overcome obstacles in goal pursuit when carrying out a listening task. This definition of listening effort was proposed in a consensus paper based on the 2015 Eriksholm Workshop on Hearing Impairment and Cognitive Energy. It builds on the more general concept of mental effort that has been [Page 1118]used widely in cognitive psychology. The general concept was described in Daniel Kahneman’s seminal book Attention and Effort published almost a half century ago. In the last two decades, the term listening effort has been used increasingly in audiology. Its usage increased as the importance of cognition became recognized by both researchers investigating listening in complex realistic situations and clinicians providing rehabilitation ...