Final Thesis

Determination of listening effort of primary-school aged children using a dual-task paradigm with different noise situations

Bachelor Thesis of Burger, Julian

Listening effort has not been intensively researched in primary-school aged (6-10 years) children yet. It refers to the attention and the cognitive resources needed to understand speech. A child-oriented dual-task paradigm is developed in order to determine the children's listening effort in different noise situations. The experiment will be conducted in a mobile hearing booth with 24 normal-hearing children. The primary task is to identify a word presented in noise by hitting the button with the matching picture out of four pictures. The secondary task includes reacting to a flashing light on screen, also, by hitting a button. It is hypothesized that children require more cognitive resources in a noise condition than in a silent condition when trying to understand speech.