Monaural versus binaural hearing: ease of listening, word recognition, and attentional effort.

Forty-eight normal-hearing subjects performed ease of listening, word recognition, and attentional effort tasks for speech in noise under binaural and two simulated unilateral conductive hearing loss (monaural) conditions. The two monaural conditions differed as a function of unoccluded ear orientation to the primary signal (monaural-near and monaural-far). Ease of listening ratings and word recognition scores were significantly poorer during monaural listening and significantly affected by ear orientation to the speech signal. Attentional effort was not significantly affected by changing from binaural to monaural-near listening, but was significantly poorer in the monaural-far condition than in either of the other listening conditions. There was a significant correlation between ease of listening ratings and word recognition, but no correlation between attentional effort and either ease of listening or word recognition.