UB Research Shows How Virtual Reality Could Help Measure Listening Effort
Kristina Milvae, assistant professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, is exploring how virtual reality technology might make it easier to measure how hard people work to listen in noisy environments. This research, done in collaboration with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, was presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting.
Kristina Milvae
Listening might seem effortless, but for about 25 million Americans with normal hearing, understanding speech in everyday situations can feel exhausting. These hidden struggles can lead to social withdrawal, fatigue and trouble with memory. Right now, there is no standard clinical test to objectively measure this increased listening effort.
Professor Milvae’s team tested whether affordable and portable virtual reality headsets, which now include eye-tracking technology, could match the performance of expensive lab-based systems that measure changes in pupil size during listening tasks. Their findings show that VR systems are promising tools for tracking listening effort, which could one day help audiologists provide better support to people experiencing hearing difficulties.
The research also points out challenges with this technology, including measurement differences, rapid tech changes and the need for specialized programming. Ongoing work will continue to explore how VR systems could become valuable tools in clinical environments.