Impacts of listening practice on work performance while wearing hearing protection.

Abstract

Individuals who work in loud environments often choose not to wear hearing protection devices (HPDs) while on the job. A prevailing justification for this decision involves potential performance impairments that come with HPD use. While previous research has been successful in characterizing the overwhelming prevalence of this issue, the question of how to go about improving HPD use still remains. In this study, we investigated the possibility that performance while wearing an HPD could improve if people are given listening training with a simulated HPD. Participants listened to podcasts in which the audio was filtered to simulate wearing an HPD (trained condition) or left unfiltered (untrained condition). To quantify the impacts of this exposure on speech comprehension and multitasking performance, we employed a recently developed task that involves tracking on-screen moving objects with a computer mouse. In this task, listeners gain hypothetical dollars by closely tracking a target object that is continually updated via speech commands presented under simulated HPD or no HPD conditions. Results suggest that listening training can have positive impacts on performance. The trained condition outperformed the untrained condition in target object tracking while listening with and without a simulated HPD. Though this is a small study, with an artificial work task, our data suggest that the development and evaluation of listening training is worthy of further examination. The incorporation of listening training into hearing loss prevention programs in the workplace could serve to improve HPD use rates by addressing workers' core performance complaints. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12982-026-01897-z.