Table 2.
GRADE Summary of Evidence for Auditory Training
| Certainty Assessment | Effect | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. of Studies | Study Design | Risk of Bias | Inconsistency | Indirectness | Imprecision | Other Considerations | g [95 percent CI] | Certainty | Importance |
| Overall cognition | |||||||||
| 2 | Randomized trials | Not serious | Not serious | Not serious | Serious* | None | 0.79 [0.57, 1.01] | ⨁⨁⨁◯ Moderate |
Critical |
| Executive function | |||||||||
| 2 | Randomized trials | Not serious | Serious† | Not serious | Serious* | None | 3.84 [1.49, 6.19] | ⨁⨁◯◯ Low |
Important |
| Attention/processing speed | |||||||||
| 3 | Randomized trials | Serious‡ | Not serious | Not serious | Serious* | None | 1.47 [−0.48, 3.42] | ⨁⨁◯◯ Low |
Critical |
| Working memory | |||||||||
| 3 | Randomized trials | Not serious | Serious† | Not serious | Serious* | None | 0.68 [−2.22, 3.58] | ⨁⨁◯◯ Low |
Important |
*
Certainty of the evidence was downgraded by one level for imprecision because the CI around the absolute effects just included the threshold between a small benefit to trivial and no benefit.
†
Certainty of evidence was downgraded one level for inconsistency because there was a large degree of heterogeneity within the pooled effect.
‡
Certainty of evidence was downgraded one level because a proportion of studies was graded as some concerns of bias across multiple criteria.
CI = confidence interval; GRADE = Grading of Recommendation Assessment, Development, and Evaluation; SMD = standardized mean difference.