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

Who can join

Ages 18 to 80 · All sexes · Healthy volunteers welcome

Inclusion Criteria:

* Subjects will be otherwise healthy normal-hearing and cochlear implant (CI) adult listeners (between 18 and 80 years old).

Exclusion Criteria:

* Individuals below 18 years of age.
* Individuals with evidence of neurologic, vascular or psychiatric disease or dementia, and taking medications that might interfere with task performance.
* Individuals with a history of language disorders (besides those associated with hearing loss for the CI users). Individuals who are non-native speakers of American English.

About the study

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.

What is being tested

• Experiment 1: Syntactic and Semantic Context (behavioral)
• Experiment 2: False Hearing and Context Overuse (behavioral)
• Experiment 3: Two-Sentence Problem (behavioral)
• Experiment 4: Cascading Effects on Discourse Comprehension (behavioral)
• Experiment 5: Self-Paced Discourse Comprehension (behavioral)
• Experiment 6: Clinical Application (behavioral)

Sponsor: NYU Langone Health · Participants: 460 · Started: Jan 2, 2025

Contact the study team

• Mario A. Svirsky, PhD · Phone: 212-263-7217
• Nicole Capach · Phone: 646-501-6905

Official record on ClinicalTrials.gov — NCT07279441

Locations in the U.S.

From ClinicalTrials.gov, data retrieved Sep 30, 2026. Each study sets its own eligibility; the study team decides who can join.