
A sequential dual-task design was used to assess the impacts of spoken sentence context and cognitive load on listening effort. Young adults with normal hearing listened to sentences masked by multitalker babble in which sentence-final words were either predictable or unpredictable. Each trial began with visual presentation of a short (low-load) or long (high-load) sequence of to-be-remembered digits. Words were identified more quickly and accurately in predictable than unpredictable sentence contexts. In addition, digits were recalled more quickly and accurately on trials on which the sentence was predictable, indicating reduced listening effort for predictable compared to unpredictable sentences. For word and digit recall response time but not for digit recall accuracy, the effect of predictability remained significant after exclusion of trials...
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