Prosocial reward relates to speech reception thresholds and age relates to subjective ratings of speech perception in noise

I. Motivation plays an important role in a listener’s effort when in noisy environments. However, there remain gaps in the previous literature pertaining to the social psychological factors underlying motivation and listening effort. To fill these gaps, this study explored how prosociality and social reward relate to speech perception in noise (SPiN) in a group of normal hearing English speakers (n = 136; mean age: 29.6, age range: 18-68). We investigated SPiN performance and subjective listening experiences across different speech masking conditions: 1-speaker, 2-speaker, and speech-spectrum shaped noise (SSN), along with a working memory task, and questionnaires pertaining to social orientation. Results indicated a robust effect of different maskers, and that individuals who rated themselves higher in prosocial traits performed better in the masker that yielded the highest threshold out of the three conditions, the 2-speaker condition. Additionally, subjective ratings of listening effort particularly in the 1-speaker condition related to age, where older participants reported greater effort. These findings highlight prosociality and age as important social psychological factors influencing SPiN performance and listening effort, respectively, particularly in complex listening scenarios.