Article
The Role of Talker Visibility on Memory and Listening Effort during Conversations (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Listening to a conversation between two talkers with the aim of remembering the content later is quite a common setting in verbal communication. In cognitive-psychological experiments on verbal short-term memory, however, the typical stimulus material consists of unrelated words or isolated sentences. In rare cases, where connected sentences are used, diotic sound presentation is realized without any visual cues from the talkers. In the present study, we investigated whether the availability of visuo-spatial and co-verbal cues may facilitate listening and reduce listening effort, while also increasing recall of the conversational content. Participants completed a dual-task paradigm that included a primary listening task in which a conversation between two virtual agents was displayed on computer screens and played through loudspeakers at two positions (+/- 60°). The presence of co-verbal cues by the virtual agents was varied (within-subject). In parallel, a vibrotactile pattern recognition task was administered as a secondary task to measure listening effort. We assessed psychometric measures, such as working memory capacity, to incorporate person-specific factors to be included as covariables in data analysis. We discuss our findings on the role of co-verbal cues on short-term memory and listening effort in conversations, with consideration of person-specific factors.