EASY LISTENING: Optimizing the consequences of effortful listening in occupational settings

PhD student 1: Ambulatory markers

Noise and hearing loss increase the listening effort needed to maintain work performance and participation, but at the cost of stress, fatigue and sick leave. the project will help optimize the benefits/costs ratio of effortful listening.

The PhD candidate will first be stationed for 1.5 years at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to develop a set of tools to assess listening value in real-life occupational settings through self-report using EMA and end-of-day interviewing/online surveys. To add a physiological stress component, the candidate will also select an optimal set of existing ambulatory tools for the physiological assessment of listening costs related to physiological stress in real-life occupational settings. These activities will allow an ambulatory toolbox(EMA, physiological wearables) to be compiled to comprehensively assess the costs and benefits of listening effort. The PhD student will share this toolbox with all EASYLI PhDs and help them along in its use.

In the ensuing 1.5 years the student will be stationed at the Eriksholm Research Centre part of Oticon, Snekkersten, Denmark to validate hearing aids as a passive sensor tool to assess speech versus non-speech as one of the most relevant factors affecting auditory demand and listening effort in real-life listening scenarios. Next, the candidate will demonstrate the validity of the ambulatory toolbox (including own-voice detection) by comparing the measured costs and benefits of listening effort in low vs. high effortful occupational settings (defined by acoustic analysis as well as self-report) and test the clinical utility of the toolbox for testing interventions using hearing devices.

The doctoral thesis will be defended at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Where will the candidate be working?

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

At the department Biological Psychology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (BioPsy VUA) we conduct research and education on the causes of individual differences in health behaviours and disease outcomes. It is a department with a long tradition in psychophysiological stress research where enthusiastic and ambitious academics work on generating knowledge and translating this to improvements in health and wellbeing. BioPsy has an extensive laboratory validation pipeline for physiological wearables and is the developer of the VU-AMS device for ambulatory stress monitoring

Eriksholm Research Centre

Eriksholm pursues audiological discoveries with the potential to significantly enhance end-user benefits in future hearing care. We work in close collaboration with academic research institutions, clinicians, and end-users, and being part of Oticon ensures that our scientific insights are applied in solutions that empower people with hearing loss.

We are a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary team of scientists that respect and care about each other and we work in a very informal environment. We are all dedicated to exploring the unknown and striving for excellence, and we have scientific integrity and room for taking chances. Eriksholm has research facilities that include EEG, Ear-EEG, motion capture, eye-tracking, fNIRS, speech testing, a large anechoic chamber with speaker array, and a fully supported clinic and audiological facility.

Senior researchers involved in this project are Eco de Geus, Dorothea Wendt, Adriana Zekveld and Jeppe Høy Konvalinka Christensen