Estimating Cochlear Implant Users' Sound Localization Abilities With Two Loudspeakers.

This is preliminary method comparison, not a validated clinical test, and the authors say additional data are needed before it could guide diagnosis, treatment, or counseling. The sample was small (34 CI/EAS users) and heterogeneous, including bilateral CI users, unilateral CI users with normal hearing or a hearing aid, and electric-acoustic stimulation users. All CI/EAS participants had prior experience localizing real sources in ongoing studies, which may have affected performance. The test room had visible loudspeakers between the two virtual endpoints, which could have provided visual cues. The virtual method used loudspeakers at -54° and +54°, not a two-corner clinic booth; speaker placement and room geometry need further study. The stimulus was speech-shaped noise bursts, not speech, so results may not generalize to communication-relevant sounds. Some associations with acoustic hearing were one-tailed and unadjusted for multiple tests, explaining only about 16% of variance. There is no consensus on the best localization metric, and the study used five measures. The work was funded in part by MED-EL, and participants were drawn from ongoing studies of MED-EL device recipients.

The work was funded in part by MED-EL Corporation, and the funder named was MED-EL Medical Electronics. Participants were drawn from ongoing studies of MED-EL device recipients.

Do not treat two-speaker virtual localization as a ready clinical measure or assume it is interchangeable with real-source testing. Virtual scores broadly tracked real scores, but they were slightly less accurate and more biased, and the authors say additional data are needed before the method could guide diagnosis, treatment, or counseling.