Relationship between Memory Load and Listening Demands in Age-Related Hearing Impairment

Figure 2

Verbal working memory task. In each trial, two consecutive sentences separated by the presentation of a fixation cross were presented. Beforehand, it was indicated whether participants were supposed to perform task 1, which corresponds to (a) the low memory load condition (i.e., indicate whether a specific word occurred in the last sentence), or task 2, which corresponds to (b) the high memory load condition (i.e., indicate whether the noun/verb was the same in both sentences). Both memory load conditions were presented either at the 80% speech reception threshold (difficult listening condition) or at the 80% threshold +5 dB (easy listening condition).