The Relationship Between Spatial Release From Masking and Listening Effort Among Cochlear Implant Users With Single-Sided Deafness.
Lukas Suveg, Tanvi Thakkar, Emily Burg and 3 others
PMID 39966994WHAT IT FOUND
In eight people with single-sided deafness, adding a cochlear implant did not clearly improve speech in noise or reduce listening effort.
Spatial separation helped, and people gaining more intelligibility seemed to need less effort.
Key findings
01Adding a cochlear implant did not produce a statistically significant improvement in speech intelligibility in noise (10.3% trend, p = .06) or in pupil-measured listening effort across noise configurations (p = .15).
02Separating the maskers to the sides improved speech intelligibility by 7.8% compared with maskers in the same location as the target.
03For listeners using both ears after implantation, larger spatial intelligibility gains were associated with greater reductions in pupil-measured effort (r = −.73, p = .04), but the association was not significant when one influential participant was removed (r = −.73, p = .06).
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 eight people, so the results cannot be expected to apply broadly. One participant was lost to attrition, and the pandemic prevented collection of additional post-operative data for two listeners. The pre-implant and post-implant tests were done at different visits, so task familiarity could have contributed to later scores. Participants differed in age, cause of deafness, and duration of deafness, which may have hidden effects. Four participants had some measurable hearing in the ear to be implanted, so the group was not uniformly profoundly deaf on that side. The spatial intelligibility and effort correlation depended on one influential participant; removing that person made the correlation non-significant. The implant-only listening mode required occluding the better-hearing ear, which is not how most people listen in daily life.
Declared interests
The supplied text says participants were recruited as part of a clinical trial of a Med-El cochlear implant. It does not provide a funding statement or conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that a cochlear implant reliably improves speech in noise or reduces listening effort for single-sided deafness. The paper notes seven of eight participants showed enhanced understanding, but the group intelligibility gain was not significant, and the effort correlation disappeared when one influential participant was removed.