*3.2. Comparison between Children with Early Bilateral Cochlear Implantation and Young Children with Normal Hearing*

To study whether implanted children develop sound localization accuracy similar to children with normal hearing, data were compared with previously reported cross-sectional results from 12 children (median age = 1.0 years) with normal hearing tested with the same technique [28]. Figure 4, panel A, illustrates that children with implants (black open circles) overlap in their performance with children with normal hearing (filled blue circles).

**Figure 4.** (**A**): The black open circles depict localization accuracy in children with bilateral cochlear implants, and the blue filled circles depict localization accuracy in children with normal hearing from Asp et al. (2016) [28]. (**B**): The lines show linear fits based on data from the present study in infants (black) and previous data from children with normal hearing (blue, Asp et al. (2016) [28]) and children with relatively late sequential bilateral implantation (grey, Asp et al. (2011) [23]).

The slopes of the regression lines for each group were similar (Normal hearing: 0.16/year, *p* = 0.015); Cochlear implant: 0.21/year, *p* = 0.0007) (Figure 4, panel B), with no difference between correlation coefficients (Cohen's q = 0.28, *p* = 0.45). An analysis of covariance with group as categorical factors (cochlear implants versus normal hearing) and time since bilateral hearing onset/age as a covariate, showed no statistically significant interaction (F = 0.30, *p* = 0.58), that is, no significant difference between developmental rates. In addition, no significant difference in localization accuracy existed between children with implants and normal hearing (F = 3.0, *p* = 0.09).
