Capturing Visual Attention With Perturbed Auditory Spatial Cues.

The normal-hearing group was younger than the hearing-loss groups, and age was not controlled. The sample size came from related training studies, not from a calculation for this audio-visual attention question. The unilateral cochlear implant group included 11 bimodal listeners and was not analysed separately by bimodal status. The plug condition was an acute change in normal-hearing adults, not a long-term unilateral hearing loss. The sound-localization task used longer sounds and allowed head movement, while the audio-visual cueing task used brief sounds and prevented head movement, so the two tasks did not match. The outcomes were laboratory response times and accuracy to visual targets, not speech recognition, listening effort, or everyday communication.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. Funding included grants from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, the Università Italo-Francese/Université Franco-Italienne, the Zegna Founder's Scholarship, Associazione Amici di Claudio Demattè, Foundation Medisite, Neurodis Foundation, the Italian Ministry for Research and University, Hospices Civils de Lyon, and IHU CeSaMe/Blind Touch.

Do not read the 17 ms response-time benefit in bilateral implant users as evidence of better speech understanding. The task measured speed of judging a visual circle after sounds that were explicitly irrelevant, not speech recognition or communication outcomes.