PP509 - Impact of Personality and Listening Effort on Subjective and Objective Hearing Perception

Abstract:
Traditional clinical practice often relies on objective hearing-in-noise tests, primarily considering age and gender as potential individual factors. Research indicates that 10-15% of the US population experiences hearing difficulties despite normal audiograms, yet few clinical protocols address this group. Hearing test outcomes can be influenced by factors such as personality and listening effort. Preliminary findings suggest that extraverted individuals may overrate their hearing performance in noise, while others may underrate it. Additionally, listening effort scores may have negative or little correlation with hearing perception scores. More personalized assessment protocols are needed to account for these individual differences.

Summary:
Objectives
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among personality, listening effort, and subjective and objective speech perception functions in adults with self-reported typical hearing (TH). We hope to introduce additional clinical tests and provide suggestions for evaluating results based on individual differences considering results from this study.

Rationale
Prior research suggests that hearing perception testing scores may be influenced not only by hearing status, and use of hearing devices but also by personal factors such as personality traits and listening effort. For instance, some individuals may be more sensitive to sound or more motivated to perform well, thereby exerting more effort to achieve similar test results. Nevertheless, specific associations among these factors remain underexplored.

Design
The targeted sample size is 98 as calculated by G*Power (version 3.1) for a proposed medium sample size. Currently, a total of 24 participants were involved ages 18-21 years with self-reported TH in both ears. Participants completed tasks via a Qualtrics link online, beginning with a validated online hearing screening. The tasks include one validated subjective hearing evaluation questionnaire (12-item Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale; SSQ12), evaluation of five personality traits (Big Five Model: Neuroticism, Openness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness), and one objective hearing in noise test (i.e., digit-in-noise; DIN) at three SNRs (i.e., -9, -12, -15 dB). Participants also completed a subjective listening effort questionnaire (NASA Task Load Index; NASA-TLX) at each SNR. Correlation models were used to explore the relationships among the four factors after a normal transformation.

Results
Preliminary results from 24 of the 98 participants indicate the following:
1) The SSQ12 overall score was positively correlated with extraversion (r = 0.23) but negatively correlated with the other four traits (r = -0.12 to -0.47). However, the sub-domain analysis reveals different patterns: extraversion is positively associated with the ‘speech’ (r = 0.18) and ‘spatial’ (r = -0.47) sub-domains but negatively associated with the ‘others’ sub-domain (r = -0.18).
2) Only agreeableness was negatively correlated (r = -0.35) with the average DIN scores across three SNRs, while the other four traits were positively associated with the average DIN scores.
3) Subjective listening effort scores were negatively correlated with DIN scores (r = -0.55) across SNRs.
4) When examining the speech perception bias (SSQ versus the average DIN score across SNRs) evaluated by each personality trait, only extraversion was positively correlated with the bias, while the other four traits showed negative correlations.

Conclusions
Different personality traits may differently affect subjective and objective hearing measure scores, as well as speech perception bias. Understanding these relationships could inform more personalized treatment plans for clients based on their personality profiles, especially for those with TH.

Brief Summary of Clinical Takeaways:
The clinical takeaway for this session is: participants will be able to factor in personality traits when interpreting test results, ensuring that the assessments reflect not only auditory performance but also personality-driven variations in behavior during testing.

Assumptions
Participants should have prior experience with clinical hearing-in-noise tests.