Introduction
Excessive noise in the workplace can have negative consequences, such as stress, fatigue, and mental health challenges, which in turn affect productivity, sick leave, and early retirement. Individuals with hearing impairments or those working in noisy environments often have to put in extra effort to maintain their performance, which can result in higher levels of stress and fatigue. On the other hand, the effort spent on listening can also bring about positive outcomes, including improved job performance, greater job satisfaction, enhanced safety, and stronger social engagement.
Aims
The project aims to train a new generation of entrepreneurial scientists skilled in using interdisciplinary tools to measure listening effort and value (the costs and benefits of effortful listening) in both laboratory environment as well as in ambulatory settings, i.e. in situations outside the laboratory where people are walking or moving around.
It will address key gaps in current methods for predicting listening value in occupational environments and evaluate clinical and occupational interventions that reduce listening effort and increase listening value.
Throughout EASYLI, individual factors and their interactions with occupational conditions, environments, and auditory load will be assessed to create personalized predictions of listening value. These predictions will help evaluate the impact of tailored interventions and adjustments to the workplace listening environment.
Methodology
EASYLI will use ambulatory and laboratory tools to assess the behavioral and health outcomes of interventions such as hearing devices, smart hearing protection, and advanced audio signal processing for communication systems. The toolbox includes ambulatory measures for auditory scene analysis, along with physiological and subjective assessments of effort and listening value, integrating methods from psychology, sound engineering, virtualization, physiology, pilot workload, and human resource factors. This inter-sectoral approach combines clinical interventions with communication devices and acoustic adjustments in non-clinical, applied settings.
Listening value: ratio between benefits and costs of listening effort.
Funded by the European Union
