Kate Slade
School of Biological and Environmental Sciences
Faculty of Science
Email: K.Slade@2012.ljmu.ac.uk
I am currently researching the psychophysiological correlates of listening effort for my funded PhD at Liverpool John Moores Univerisity supervised by Dr Michael Richter, Professor Stephen Fairclough and Professor Sophia Kramer (VU University Amsterdam).
Mental fatigue is a predominant issue that individuals with hearing impairment report suffering with, evidence suggests that this fatigue is a result of excessive effort investment in daily listening. My research focuses on using psychological theories of effort and physiology to examine whether measures of autonomic effort-driven cardiac responses (systolic blood pressure, pre-ejection period and respiratory sinus arrhythmia) are useful indicators of effort investment in listening tasks and subsequent mental fatigue. The ability to quantify listening effort in such a way may help audiologists to enhance the quality of audiometric assessments and hearing aid fitting, to reduce mental effort involved in listening.
Thus far, we have conducted studies guided by the framework of motivational intensity theory, which test the impact of both listening demand and the importance of understanding speech on effort-driven cardiac responses in individuals with no hearing impairment. We aim to investigate whether changes in autonomic activity during listening effort can predict self-reported mental fatigue.
We are also interested in how autonomic activation during mentally effortful tasks, such as listening, differs from activation during physical effort investment.
You can find out more information about my research at our lab website, www.effortlab.website.
Degrees
2019, Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom, PhD
2015, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom, BSc, Applied Psychology
Journal article
Ogden R, Henderson J, Slade K, McGlone FP, Richter M. 2019. The effect of increased parasympathetic activity on perceived duration Consciousness and Cognition, 76 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url
Richter M, Slade K. 2017. Interpretation of Physiological Indicators of Motivation: Caveats and Recommendations International Journal of Psychophysiology, DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url
Thesis/Dissertation
Slade K. 2019. The Autonomic Correlates of Listening Effort Richter M, Fairclough S, Kramer SE. Public Url
Poster
Slade K, Richter M. 2018. The motivation to listen: The effect of listening demand on effort-driven cardiovascular responses The 30th Annual Convention of The Association for Psychological Science
Slade K, Richter M. 2018. The motivation to listen: The impact of listening demand on effort-driven cardiovascular responses Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Motivation (SSM), San Francisco, USA
Slade K, Fairclough S, Kramer SE, Richter M. 2017. The impact of listening demand on effort-driven cardiovascular responses. 29th Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, Boston, USA
Slade K, Kramer SE, Fairclough S, Richter M. 2017. The impact of listening demand on effort-driven cardiovascular responses. 10th anniversary meeting of the Society for the Study of Motivation, Boston, USA.
Slade K, Fairclough S, Kramer SE, Richter M. 2017. Systolic blood pressure as an indicator of listening effort in response to listening demand International Convention of Psychological Science, Vienna, Austria
Slade K, Richter M. 2016. The autonomic correlates of listening effort. Faculty of Science Post-Graduate Seminar and Poster Day 2016, Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Author Url
Conference publication
Richter M, Slade K. Determinants of listening effort and their effects on sympathetic and parasympathetic activity 4th International Conference on Cognitive Hearing Science for Communication
Performance
Slade K, Richter M. Sympathetic cardiovascular responses reflect changes in effortful listening .
Conference presentation:
The impact of listening demand on cardiovascular effort-driven responses., Faculty of Science Postgraduate Research Seminar and Poster Day 2017, Liverpool John Moores University, UK., Oral presentation. 2017