Authors: P Prameela¹, Nisha KV¹, Ajith Kumar Uppunda¹
¹All India Institute of Speech and Hearing (AIISH)
Background: Spatial hearing deficits are a common complaint among individuals with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), yet clinical adoption of spatial tests remains limited due to unestablished diagnostic accuracy. This study aimed to determine the diagnostic accuracy and establish cutoff criteria for four closed-field spatial hearing tests in the SNHL population.
Method: The study included 125 participants (61 SNHL; 64 normal hearing – NH). Phase I involved administering a test battery: interaural time difference (ITD), interaural level difference (ILD), virtual acoustic space identification (VASI), and the spatial domain of the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ). Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves and Youden’s index were used to determine sensitivity, specificity, and cutoffs. Phase II validated these cutoffs on a new sample of 19 participants.
Results: ROC analysis revealed that VASI and the spatial-SSQ performed well, showing high sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC). Conversely, ITD and ILD tests performed poorly in differentiating SNHL from NH groups. Validation of the derived cutoff values demonstrated an 86.7% effectiveness in group classification.
Conclusion: VASI and spatial-SSQ demonstrate high diagnostic accuracy for distinguishing SNHL from NH. As an objective measure, VASI is recommended as the primary tool for closed-field spatial hearing assessment, while the spatial-SSQ serves as a valuable complementary tool for capturing subjective perceptual outcomes.
