The Effect of Stimulation Position and Ear Canal Occlusion on Perception of Bone Conducted Sound.
Jie Wang, Stefan Stenfelt, Shengjian Wu and 4 others
PMID 36200171WHAT IT FOUND
Placing bone conduction devices on the condyle improved speech clarity and sound quality compared to the mastoid or temple.
In-ear occlusion further boosted low-frequency hearing and intelligibility. Air conduction remained the clearest option overall.
Key findings
01Bone conduction stimulation at the condyle provided better speech intelligibility and sound quality than at the temple or mastoid.
02Occluding the ear canal with in-ear headphones significantly improved bone conduction speech intelligibility, particularly at the temple position.
03Air conduction stimulation resulted in higher speech intelligibility scores than any bone conduction position tested.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 11 participants, all with normal hearing and a narrow age range (median 24 years), so results may not apply to patients with hearing loss or older adults. The speech material was limited to Mandarin Chinese, which has tonal properties distinct from English, so intelligibility findings may not generalize directly to other languages. The study tested healthy individuals using laboratory equipment, not clinical hearing aid devices or patients with conductive or mixed hearing loss.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. Funding was provided by various Chinese government and university science foundations.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that bone conduction devices positioned at the condyle will outperform standard air conduction hearing aids for patients with hearing loss. In this study, air conduction still provided the highest speech intelligibility scores, and the participants had normal hearing.