When hearing protection makes you worse at your job: objective measurement of decrements in sensorimotor tracking

Abstract: Occupational hearing loss (HL) is a significant problem worldwide, even though it can be mitigated by the wearing of hearing protection devices (HPDs). When surveyed, workers report that worsened work performance while wearing HPDs is one reason why they choose not to wear them. However, there have been few studies to supplement these subjective reports with objective measures. In this study, listeners heard commands from the Coordinate Response Measure (CRM) corpus (i.e., sentences of the form "Ready <call sign> go to <color> <number> now). CRM sentences informed listeners of which of nine moving on-screen objects to track with a computer mouse (e.g., "blue four" refers the listener to a blue square). The commands were presented in background street noise and were heard under No HPD or HPD wearing conditions. HPD wearing was simulated with a digital filter meant to mimic the attenuation profile of an HPD. Continuous recording of tracking error allowed the simultaneous examination of how HPD wearing impacted speech comprehension, the accuracy of tracking, and how tracking accuracy varied as a function of time on task. Listeners spent less time tracking the correct object in the HPD wearing condition. Tracking error, after trimming data to those time points in which the target object was known, showed worse performance for the HPD condition than the No HPD condition. Workers' complaints of poorer performance while wearing HPDs are justified and extend beyond just auditory situational awareness. Considering these aspects of performance will be an important part of addressing HPD non-use in occupational settings.

Keywords: Hearing Loss, Listening Effort, Dual-Task, Safety Climate, Occupational Health Psychology

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005663

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