Cochlear Implants and Listening Effort: the Interaction of Cognitive and Sensory Constraints

Part of paid clinical trials in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Sponsor
NYU Langone Health
Study ID
NCT07279441
Status
Recruiting
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Conditions

  • Cochlear Implant Users

Eligibility Criteria

Sex
ALL
Age
18 Years - 80 Years
Healthy Volunteers
Accepted

Interventions

  • Experiment 1: Syntactic and Semantic Context — BEHAVIORAL
    * Recall of meaningful sentences, anomalous word strings, and unstructured word lists * Measurement of syntactic and semantic gain * Pupillometry during auditory and visual presentation
  • Experiment 2: False Hearing and Context Overuse — BEHAVIORAL
    * Two-choice word recognition task with semantic priming/luring in multi-talker babble * Three Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) levels (heavy, medium, light noise) * Confidence ratings for responses * Pupillometry measurement
  • Experiment 3: Two-Sentence Problem — BEHAVIORAL
    * Speech recognition and recall of single sentences vs. paired sentences * Manipulation of inter-sentence semantic predictability (high vs. low) * Four test conditions: 1-sentence, 2-sentences, 2-sentences+pre-prompt, 2-sentences+post-prompt * Pupillometry during task
  • Experiment 4: Cascading Effects on Discourse Comprehension — BEHAVIORAL
    * Recall of 27 narrative passages (67-97 words each) * Propositional analysis scoring (main ideas, mid-level ideas, details) * Measurement of semantic hierarchy effect * Pupillometry during listening
  • Experiment 5: Self-Paced Discourse Comprehension — BEHAVIORAL
    * 24 discourse passages (150 words each): 12 narrative, 12 expository * Continuous presentation vs. self-paced presentation (stops at clause/sentence boundaries) * Measurement of pause times and comprehension recall * Pupillometry during task
  • Experiment 6: Clinical Application — BEHAVIORAL
    * Self-Paced Sentence Comprehension * Sentences with varying syntactic complexity (active-conjoined, subject-relative, object-relative) * Continuous vs. self-paced (with pause at major clause boundary) presentation * True/false comprehension verification statements * Pupillometry measurement

Study Details

This study examines how cochlear implant users understand and comprehend speech in realistic communication situations. Through six experiments measuring listening effort via pupillometry and discourse comprehension, we will investigate how linguistic context, cognitive demands, and processing time affect speech understanding in CI users, and in normal-hearing controls) to identify factors underlying communication resilience versus vulnerability and develop improved, ecologically valid assessment and rehabilitation strategies.

Key Dates

Start date
Jan 2, 2025
Status verified
Dec 2025
Primary completion
Jan 2, 2030
Completion
Jan 2, 2030

Study Design

Enrollment
460 participants (estimated)
Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
OTHER

Arms

  • Experimental: Cochlear Implant Users
    Postlingually deaf adults (age 18-80) with at least one year of CI experience. Participants will complete behavioral speech perception and comprehension tasks with pupillometry measurement.
  • Active Comparator: Normal-Hearing Controls (Vocoder Simulation)
    Normal-hearing adults (age 18-80) listening to degraded speech via 4- and 8-channel vocoders. Participants will complete the same behavioral tasks as CI users but with (or without) acoustically degraded speech simulation.

Primary Outcome Measure

Percent correct Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) words across experiments 1-3 [ Time Frame: End experiments 1-3 (up to 9 hours) ]

Central Contacts

Locations (2)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
Brandeis UniversityWalthamMassachusetts02453
Arthur Wingfield (PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR)
NYU Langone HealthNew YorkNew York10016
Mario A. Svirsky, PhD (PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR)

Find similar trials in Waltham, MA

By research site
Brandeis University· Waltham, MANYU Langone Health· New York, NY

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