Working memory and listening fatigue in cochlear implantation

Abstract

Background

Hearing involves more than just the central auditory pathway’s operation and hearing threshold. Instead, the term ‘hearing’ encompasses a range of skills such as listening, comprehending, and communicating. As a result, a thorough assessment of the patient’s listening effort and working memory is critical.

Methods

Forty-four subjects with cochlear implantation were included in the study, 22 patients as a study group and 22 subjects as a control group. They were assessed by digit span test for working memory, speech in noise test at different SNR levels, Fatigue assessment scale and Effort assessment scale.

Results

There was a statistically significant difference in the Spin test between the study and control group. The study group showed a significant higher Spin scores at all SNR levels. There was a significant difference in both digit span forward and digit span backward tests between both the study and control group with a significant negative correlation between digit span and listening effort and fatigue scales. There was a significant statistical difference in the mean results of both the listening fatigue assessment scale and listening effort assessment scale between the study and control group where the study group showed a significant higher result in both scales.

Conclusion

Assessing the effort associated with recognising speech is very valuable. Scales for measuring listening effort and listening fatigue as well as working memory can be easily incorporated into the basic audiological evaluation providing valuable insights for further rehabilitation.

Keywords:

• Listening effort
• listening fatigue
• cochlear implantation
• digit span

Ethical approval

This study has been approved by Research Ethics committee of Kasr Al-Aini Hospital, Cairo University (code: MD-5-2021). An informed Consent to participate was obtained.

Author contributions

HH contributed with sharing in writing the paper and submission and corre‐ spondence. AS and NM contributed with application of the idea, steps of the methods and supervising the study work. AS and MH supervised the work. AS contributed with data collection and writing the paper. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets during and/or analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.