title: Hearing Impairment and Cognitive Energy: The Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening (FUEL).
abstract: The Fifth Eriksholm Workshop on "Hearing Impairment and Cognitive Energy" was convened to develop a consensus among interdisciplinary experts about what is known on the topic, gaps in knowledge, the use of terminology, priorities for future research, and implications for practice. The general term cognitive energy was chosen to facilitate the broadest possible discussion of the topic. It goes back to who described the effects of attention on perception; he used the term psychic energy for the notion that limited mental resources can be flexibly allocated among perceptual and mental activities. The workshop focused on three main areas: (1) theories, models, concepts, definitions, and frameworks; (2) methods and measures; and (3) knowledge translation. We defined effort as the deliberate allocation of mental resources to overcome obstacles in goal pursuit when carrying out a task, with listening effort applying more specifically when tasks involve listening. We adapted Kahneman's seminal (1973) Capacity Model of Attention to listening and proposed a heuristically useful Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening (FUEL). Our FUEL incorporates the well-known relationship between cognitive demand and the supply of cognitive capacity that is the foundation of cognitive theories of attention. Our FUEL also incorporates a motivation dimension based on complementary theories of motivational intensity, adaptive gain control, and optimal performance, fatigue, and pleasure. Using a three-dimensional illustration, we highlight how listening effort depends not only on hearing difficulties and task demands but also on the listener's motivation to expend mental effort in the challenging situations of everyday life.
authors.affiliation: 1Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; 2Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Section Ear & Hearing and EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 3Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, USA; 4EarLens Corporation, Menlo Park, California, USA; 5Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; 6Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA; 7Phonak AG, Science & Technology, Cognitive & Ecological Audiology; Stäfa, Switzerland; 8Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden; 9Eriksholm Research Centre, Oticon A/S, Snekkersten, Denmark; 10Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 11School of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA; 12MRC/CSO Institute of Hearing Research, Scottish Section, Glasgow, United Kingdom; 13Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 14School of Natural Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom; 15Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA; 16Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA; and 17Department of Psychology and Volen National Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.
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mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003071:Cognition; D032882:Comprehension; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D013067:Speech Perception