Auditory Training for Long-Term Deafness?

AnDarkon asks: "I've recieved a cochlear implant about a year ago and I'm looking for material with which to train my hearing after 33 years of deafness. The material I'm interested in would help develop my speech recognition abilities. My hearing is already 100% at 30 decibels. It's the understanding speech part that is taking more time. I've looked high and low online and offline for literature that would provide information where I could train myself, on my own or with a hearing partner, to recognize general speech. There are some adult literature, but they're generally directed towards adults who have hearing experience and only recently lost their hearing. After 33 years, I'm pretty much starting from scratch, very new to hearing, more than a newborn baby (the baby starts hearing while in the womb.) I've found some aids such as text-to-speech readers and Microsoft Agents very helpful. Any advice my way would greatly benefit and, hopefully, for other cochlear implant users with similar experiences like me."

Comments

Book suggestion

[z0ot]

The book 'The Language Instinct' by Steven Pinker may provide some assistance. It offers insight into how the brain perceives and develops language ability. While it doesn't contain explicit techniques for improving speech recognition, perhaps it will give you some ideas on how to develop your own exercises for training your hearing.

DVD

[turboalberta]

The first idea that popped to my mind which seems relatively easy is to watch dvds with the subtitling on.

RA

Re:DVD

[AnDarkon]

Indeed, I do that nowadays. I find that using the subtitles (instead of the closed captions) generally leaves out the sound effects and that has helped me consciously identify environmental sounds.

Alas, not all subtitles are in sync with what was being spoken in the movie.

Venue

[Evro]

Don't you think it would be better to ask a doctor or other medical professional than a bunch of computer nerds?

Re:Venue

[AnDarkon]

I should have mentioned it in the article; I did, in fact, ask the professionals before turning to the slashdot crowd. Most of their implant users fit in several categories:

1. children born deaf or lost their hearing soon after birth (within 6 years)
2. Adults who were able to use hearing aids until their hearing progessed to the point where HAs no longer worked. They have a basis on which to train themselves on hearing with a cochlear implant.

Since my background, as a profoundly deaf man, statistically would have put me right into the Deaf (notice the capital `D') community, and then I wouldn't even preceive a need for an implant. However, since I'm a fluke to the statisticians, I grew up completely in the hearing world; hearing parents, hearing siblings, and so on.

But I digress; the professionals were at a loss on how to advise a deaf man who's never, nor could, remembered hearing per se. So here I am.

Re:Venue

[blakestah]

Don't you think it would be better to ask a doctor or other medical professional than a bunch of computer nerds?

I'd recommend children's reading aids - like "Hooked on phonics" type stuff. Use the auditory portion - and do whatever you can to avoid relying on your vision. If you want something more powerful, try FastForWord from the Scientific Learning Corp. This program helps language learning impaired children learn the toughest elements of language perception - the rapid transition phonemes (like a /ba/ vs /da/ distinction).

This computer nerd works in the lab that generated the research that led to FastForword, and before that created the first US designed cochlear implants (and no, I was not involved in either project).

A few ideas

[codexus]

I'm really not qualified to answer that since I've really no idea what it must be like. But since this is slashdot...

- language lessons: the tapes or CDs that come with language lessons start slowly and then gradually increase speed. And you'll get something that is well pronounced and free from noise.
- Audio books: Buy some audio books and buy the printed books too. Then read along while listening to the tape. Be careful some audio books don't include the full text, so be sure to choose an unabridged version or it will be useless for reading along.

Audio books are going to be harder to follow than language lessons, but I have no idea of what you can currently do.

That's great

[Cyclone66]

It's great that you're able to hear, it must be wonderful to finally hear all these things which previously were silent (were you completely deaf?).

As the other guy said you really should be asking a professional rather than a bunch of nerds. Go do some research and find out where the specialists are, in hospitals or universities. If you make a good case they might use you for a study, it certainly seems interesting enough.

As for slashdot advice, buy some dvds and watch them with the subtitles on. Watch the same movie over and over again so you can get used to it, then try a few scenes and try to read the subtitles with the actors on the screen. You also need someone to help you and give you feedback. Most likely you aren't speaking properly so you should work on that as much as you work on understanding. Watch DVD's is great slashdot advice :)

Learning with speach text recognition software is probably not a good idea because they don't speak naturally.

Re:That's great

[topham]

I was thinking at first this was good advice, but actually, I don't think it is.

There is a significant likelyhood that the individual would slip into their old habbit of reading the subtitles without listening to the words. Never mind the movies where they don't even come close to matching.

Personally I think audio-books would be a good choice. It's a natural human voice, unlike a speech synthesizer. It will force the individual to listen as they don't have the words in front of them.

Of course, the best advice would probably be all of the above. Some of each, just don't slip into lazy habbits of reading instead of listening.

Re:That's great

[Cyclone66]

Yeah audio books would be a better idea. I was trying to give more slashdottish advice though :)
He would also need to avoid action movies and the like and go for the dialog heavy movies... And yeah, he would also need to avoid dvds with subtitles don't match, like Ghostbusters.

Re:That's great

[shumacher]

I wasn't so sure that movies would be a good idea. I think the DVD thing may still be helpful. Movies tend to have a lot of characters. People on the phone. People on TV. People on the radio. I'm thinking a stand-up comedy DVD or a documentary DVD would be more useful.

Re:That's great

[Gordonjcp]

Watch out with this, though. As you've already said, not all DVD captions are in sync with the speech. And make sure the dialogue is actually in English - Amelie is right out...

Community Resources

[lynx_user_abroad]

First off; Welcome! And congradulations.

If you're trying to retrain, my first advice is to unlearn some of what you've learned in your 33 years of silence. Don't try to rely too much on the Internet for speech and listening training. The online world is a great place for a deaf person (since so little of it lives on the audio channel) but for learning to hear, there's no place like the Real World.

I'd recommend venturing out into places where speech is the local currency. Find someplace where the people are not busy and obligated to be there and talk to them. For example, head into the local WalMart. Say hello to the greeter and ask where the shoes or restrooms are. (I'm sure you already know, but you'll have the spoken answer to compare.)

Flea Markets are another good resource for this; you'll not only learn to understand the variety of speech, but to recognise words among the noises of a crowd.

Another example; phone the friendly people who answer a phone for a living; pizza order takers, airline reservation clerks and (I'm gonna get modded down for this) tech support bobs. These are people who make a living by understanding others and communicating clearly.

Above all, don't worry that other people may have problems understanding you; anyone who's lived for a day in this world has encountered people who have trouble making themselves understood. I get callers all the time who can't speak clearly or can't understand what I say no matter how clearly (or how loudly, or how many times) I say it. Sometimes the problem is language or accent, sometines it's a physical problem, sometings it's just bad phone lines, or the effects of one party or the other being drunk. (Um, that didn't come out right.)

Also, understand that the skills you've learned to communicate when you could not hear means that you can now out-communicate most of the people in the world, even if verbal communication is not your strong suit. Be gracious; don't put the rest of us to shame.

Re:Community Resources

[pediddle]

If you call a tech support line, just hope you don't get some bo[o]b in a callcenter sweathouse in India. God knows I can't understand them...

Don't think text to speech is a good idea.

[Spudley]

Having tried few text-to-speech packages over the years, I am not convinced that they would be much use to you - they mispronounce so many words that they are next to useless even for me, and would surely be counter-productive in your situation.

My advice is less high-tech. I would buy some audio novels - the tapes or CDs you can buy which are a reading of a book - and buy the book as well. Then you can follow the story as it's read to you. Just make sure that the recording is not an abridged version of the book.

Audio novels are an excellent way to enjoy a book, and I'm sure they would be very helpful to you too.

Subtitles

[Tux2000]

Here in Germany, we have several TV magazines and films with optional subtitles using teletext. I think that could help. DVDs with subtitles may do the trick, too.

Tux2000

This is bad....

[Anonymous Coward]

"What?"

Relax

[gmaestro]

It sounds like you're looking for a techy magic bullet, but...

Hearing and listening are skills which take many years to master. Since you are making a conscience effort at it, You'll probably be better tham most in a few years.

Take time to get used to hearing all sounds, not just speech. Music uses rhythm, articulation, pitch and tempo just as speech does. This should also break up the more tedious aspects of learning this new skill.

Work at it daily. Don't try too much and then get burned out. Pace yourself.

The best way to learn an idiom is to participate in it. It sounds like you're doing that already. Be patient and enjoy sounds. Maybe take a break from them every now and then (since you can). I know the omnipresence of sound can be burdonesome at first.

Audio Books and ESL?

[truefluke]

Well, I'm hearing impaired (binaural), and one of the things my folks did to keep my interest in reading and speaking when I was very young was get me tons of those 45 rpm records that came with books. They were usually adaptations of popular movies and other stories (i.e. Star Wars, The Jungle Book ... a lot of classic Disney). I would sit and play the records and read along with the narration.

You, however, are much more mature so I'm guessing some audio books on tape are a solution, also you can see if Berlitz still has their English series. Other language formats can help also, the library, or your local 'Adult' education courses down at the college _could_ have some ESL (English as a Second Language) courses available.

Speech Therapy is another route, I had _years_ of speech therapy when I was a child, and it did help. There's nothing 'childish' about it at all, if that's something you're afraid of, because these people are professionals. They'll help you on the 'recieving' end, and give you feedback whether you're forming your vowels and consonants correctly (To this day I still have a problem with 's' sometimes).

This part is a little off topic now. I'm going to be completely forward and ask, can you sign at all? American Sign Languge? Yes, No? Because you can use ASL as a foundation to sign while you talk, it _does_ actually help make the message clearer. You didn't mention in your post whether you signed or not. I'm not talking about learning pure ASL, I mean using simple ASL signs in English word order. If you wrote that post, then English is obviously your first language, I'm willing to bet. This is a stop gap measure should cochlear not be able to capture the remaining percentage of your projected hearing range.

If you want to talk more, you can throw me an e-mail at this address, truefluke at yahoo dot com (you know how to read that). I only offer this as a fellow stuck in a hearing world who has some idea of what you're going through.

The natural path?

[bananaeater42]

It would seem to me that the best thing to do is to do nothing at all, or rather, just what feels natural.

Or maybe just do what a baby does, watch lips and babble. It might not be the most manly thing in the world to do, but it seems to work.

No doubt the hordes of neurons responsible for your audio processing are going to have a field day with all this new input, and I imagine it will take them some time to figure it all out.

Relax, take it slow, and don't force it would be my humble opinion.

Have you been signing exclusively? If you haven't been talking in a while, you might experience something interesting. Since talking and thinking share the same "memory address" in your brain (gross simplification), you might find your ability to concentrate dwindle.

By the way, do you keep a journel? I'd love to read about your experience.

I hope everything works out for you!

Lip-reading

[itwerx]

If you know how to lip-read then you've already got the real-world equivalent of sub-titles. Work backwards...

Questions

[theNote]

Well, I don't have any advice, but your situation is probably the most fascinating thing I've read on /. in a long time.
All I have are questions:

1. Did you read lips? If so, do you find it harder to read lips now that there is sound accompanying sight?

2. Do you have directional sense? What I mean is, can you tell yet whether a sound is behind you, to the left of you, in front, etc?

3. Can you tell the difference between music and speech yet, or other general types of sound?

4. Do you have the implant on all day, or just occasionally? Do you sleep with it on? Does it hurt?

OMG, I have so many questions, like one of the above posts, I would love to read a journal about this if you have the time to keep one!

GOOD LUCK!

Re:Questions

[topham]

I'm not hearing impaired but I'd like to add a comment or two. (Ok, sometimes my GF thinks I am...).

I worked in a lumber yard for about a year, this included driving a Forklift & using a saw all day so we had to wear hearing protection. I found it amazing how easy it was to adapt to the situation and learn to read lips in a general way. It was generally not too difficult to talk to people while standing beside a saw and talking to someone sitting on the runing forklift, and yet I found that quite difficult at first.

After a while it became second nature and I can't tell you whether I heard most of the conversation, or whether I lipread more than half of it.

Admitedly, not the same as someone who is left with lipreading or signlanguage.

Re:Questions

[AnDarkon]

1. Yes, I read lips at 85% comprehension. The other 15% is blamed on English and its similar-looking words. Try saying `big' and `pig' in front of the mirror and you'll see what I mean.
   
2. Too soon to tell. I rely on experience to infer where the sound is coming from. If I hear something I couldn't identify and I don't immediately see anything that could be causing the sound, I look behind me.
   
3. Yes. Music isn't `sound' to me; whenever I feel elated, uplifted, that's music. Sound, on the other hand, sound like, pardon the pun, sounds to me.
   
4. I wear the implant all day long and take it off at bedtime. It's way too uncomfortable to sleep with the speech processor on my belt. It doesn't hurt. There are high-pitched sounds that would hurt if I listened to them too long.
   

The cochlear implant relies on two components; the internal and the external components.

The internal component was surgically embedded into my head, behind my ear. The group of electrodes is inserted into my shell-like cochlea, to lie next to the cochlear nerve. I'll get to that in a moment.

The external component consists of a microphone and a speech processor. The speech processor is worn at the belt and the microphone is magnetically attached to my scalp, connected to the internal magnet inside my head.

The speech processor is responsible for translating analog sounds into digital pulses. The microphone captures the sounds and passes them down to the processor through a thin cord, usually worn under my shirt. The digital pulses travel back up the same cord to the microphone which then transmits, via low-powered radio frequency, the pulses through my skin. The pulses direct the electrodes to stimulate the cochlear nerve and in essence, mimic the process of hearing.

Re:Questions

[theNote]

One more:

From what I gather, many deaf people consider being deaf a cultural identity that they would not change given the chance.
Not too long ago, I read a story about a hearing baby being born to a deaf couple and they damaged his hearing on purpose to make him fit into their world.

You've said you grew up in the hearing community, but are there any deaf people you know who have encouraged you not to get the implant, or (for lack of a better word) shunned you because of it?

Re:Questions

[kris_lang]

A few answers and some more questions for you:

I heartily agree with the use of audio books. I've listened to hundreds of them on long drives and may I recommend that you try to find children's books on audio as they may have clearer enunciation and slower speech rates. I'd suggest Ramona and the Pest series, text author is Beverly Cleary, read aloud by Stockard Channing I believe. She articulates distinctly and carefully.

I had been involved with some of the earliest cochlear implants on children below the age of three. I haven't reviewed the literature recently, but I do know that the directional aspects of hearing depend on the higher frequency components being redirected and filter by the pinna of the ears. May I ask you a few questions?

What brand of implant do you have?

How many channels does it have? (The audio stream is broken down into multple frequency bands by FFT and then sent to the receiver. The best I remember from 1991 were 8 channel devices. Are they much better now?)

Where is the microphone? Are you certain that the microphone is on the scalp transmitter? Is it on your belt mounted processor? (A lot the directional cues depend on the fact that the qualia of the sounds change as you move your head around. If the microphone is on your hip, moving your head will not help you localize the direction of a sound source.)

Have you had just one operation for one ear, or have you had a second operation for the other ear as well? A lot of the directional cues depend on the HRTF (head related transfer function) applied to the sound by sound shadowed by and diffracted around your head. Head shadowing will affect some frequencies. Higher frequencies are needed to be able to differentiate high elevation sources from low elevation sources. However, the key cue in directionality is the comparison of amplitude and interaural time delays between the ears. If you only have one implant, your cochlear nerves and brainstem will not receive the stereo signals which it will need to decode the azimuth and elevation of the sound sources.

Best of luck to you, and may I also ask if you are working with a speech therapist? They do wonderful work. Are you involved with any clinical studies (or since the market for implants has been large for a while, is this just a production job, fairly "routine" surgery [though no surgical intervention is routine for those undergoing it], with no intensive clinical followup?)

Re:Questions

[compwizrd]

The highest I've seen is the Nucleus system, with 22 electrodes.

There are Behind the ear(BTE) units that look like a hearing aid, instead of using a belt processor, but they only usually store 2 programs instead of four. You use different programs(settings like volume, pitch, etc) in different situations.

There have been very few binaural implants, usually only done when the first implant has problems. This leaves the other ear alone, in case 5 or 10 years from now, someone finds a better solution, and the existing ear has been destroyed by the implant, rendering the new solution useless.

From what I've read, the processor makes more of a difference than the electrode implant itself.

Re:Questions

[kmellis]

This is a complicated issue.

But I think the key point to understand is that Sign is a complete and functional language the equal of any spoken language; and that a shared native language (spoken or signed), in turn, is one of the most fundamental attributes of "culture". So, Deaf people have a culture not merely by being deaf; but by having a language. That gives their claims of cultural legitimacy complete authority.

In this person's case, he/she was apparently denied their rightful place in Deaf culture long ago. Getting a cochlear implant today doesn't aggravate that grievance so much as it, at least, mitigates part of the wrong done to him/her by being denied a true native language. (Although his/her written English is noticeably superior to that of the typical fully deaf person who didn't acquire Sign as a baby -- neurological research has demonstrated that there's a narrow window of brain development for true native language acquisition.)

My own opinion is that I have to admit that, all things considered, a person is better of being able to hear at birth and to acquire a spoken language in contrast to being deaf and acquiring Sign. Medical technology now makes this possible. But it's not as easy a judgment to make as so many people think it is, simply because most people don't realize how completely functional a native signer really is, and how much being a native signer also means being part of a distinct, vibrant, and effectively unique culture[1]. Correcting what is undeniably at least minimally a physical deficiency has the effect of stranding the Deaf culture in a wasteland of malnourishment, much like a small town withering away in the neglected countryside. On balance, maybe it's better that way -- but one should be very tactful when trying to explain this to the old folks sitting in the town square watching their town die.

[1] Signed languages parallel spoken languages in that they can run the gamut of being completely independent of each other to being dialects of each other. Signed languages develop and evolve pretty much the same way (for the purposes of this discussion) that spoken languages do. For example, American Sign Language and French Sign Language are closely related to a recent common ancestor, and so they are nearly merely dialects of each other. In contrast, UK Sign Language (or whatever it's called) has no resemblance to ASL. (And don't confuse ASL with "signed English" -- which is just transliterated English.) Anyway, Native Signers are such tiny minorities in each of the majority cultures they exist within, they are effectively "unique".

Re:Questions

[truefluke]

OK, without resorting to opinion, studies have shown that children, whether hearing or deaf, who pick up signing in their formative years have the apparent gain of learing fasterthan their non-signing peers. ASL is a completely logical, structured language based out of the visual and spatial elements of our enviroment, and stimulates both sides of the brain (the artistic and logical sides). It is difficult to codify this since studies are just beginning, but many mothers report a simple joy in being able to comprehend their child's wants an earlier age than the child's _vocal_ processes would allow.

So what does this mean? While the hearing babies are screeching and wailing and gargling, a simple _gesture_ got the message across so much quicker. So no, I do _not_ agree that a person is better of being able to hear at birth and to acquire a spoken language in contrast to being deaf and acquiring Sign...(your words).

Re:Questions

[kmellis]

You'll notice that I used the expression "all things considered". Whether Sign is a superior form of communication for human beings -- something certainly quite debatable[1], but a provocative idea -- plays only a small role in that determination. A very, very large factor is the fact that 99.99% of the world is hostile to deafness. As long is this is true, being deaf is a huge disadvantage for a person. I specifically was trying to avoid the argument of whether being deaf is inherently a severe disability. All I was saying is that I am somewhat reluctantly in favor of cochlear implants for infants. Surely you can tell from the rest of my post that I am both informed about deafness, and am something of an advocate of Deaf culture.

You might notice that a similar argument could be made justifying some procedure that changes skin color of infants from black to white in infancy. That's a very disturbing idea. But since deafness necessarily means being disabled in a very real, though perhaps minimal sense, I don't think it can be compared directly to being a racial minority. It is people's bigotry against racial minorities that is the sole disadvantage faced by them -- deaf people face that and the simple reality that they have one less sense than most everyone else. Eliminating bigotry will completely solve what is a problem for racial minorities; but doing so will only solve part of the problem for deaf people. In this context, changing skin color is an absurd way to "correct" a disadvantage that is real, but not inherent. The bigotry is 100% of the problem.

The reason this (correcting deafness) is such a tricky issue is because the disadvantages that deaf people face are the result of a subtle interplay between an inherent physcial limitation and all the social, neurological, and technological forces that reduce or eliminate it (or fail to do so). Partisans on both sides of the this debate want to make it wholly about either physical disability or bigotry. But it's about both, and claiming that it's not is almost certainly over-politicizing the issue to the detriment of individual human beings that are caught in the middle.

[1] I sense that this sentence will also cause you to jump to your keyboard. To clarify, I am not arguing that in some ways Sign isn't a superior for of communication -- it clearly is. But until there's more information on the question of how truly "native" to the human brain Sign really is, I'm reserving judgment. The presumption is that spoken language is native neurologically, and that Sign is a (hugely successful) example of the plasticity of the brain. On the other hand, as you know, there's good reasons to question how inherently language is tied to hearing and speech at the neurological and evolutionary level.

Re:Questions

[truefluke]

Thanks for that clarification. I just felt the tone was a dismissal of signing outright. I feel better now.

Re:Questions

[AnDarkon]

1. ``A true native language'' is the language the person is born into, not whatever his skin color/disability/political nature is. If that were the case, then every race would just have one native language, instead of experiencing all these wonderful and rich languages.
   
2. The ``Denied his rightful place'' in the [...] community comment smacks of bigotry. It is the self's sole right to be wherever he wants to be. Getting the cochlear implant was a decision that only I was the utmost qualified to make; not the so-called experts, not the Deaf community, not my family nor my siblings. The decision was mine, and mine only.
   
3. There are two major views on deafness; 1) Deafness is a cultural trait and, 2) Deafness is a disability to be overcome through, but not limited to, social and technological means. I don't oppose either views. People are free to choose either opinion or entirely make up their own.
   
4. Getting a cochlear implant does not, in any way, diminish my stature within society in any way. It does send out the message that I'm less of a person without the cochlear implant. It is unfortunate, however incorrect the assumption by society that may be. But, as a person, I don't give one fig about what the society thought about what I thought. Every person's decision about his life has immediate impact upon his own life, regardless of the impact upon society. A raindrop in the vast ocean may not disturb it any, but it will change the path of that little fish the raindrop fell on.
   
5. Before you go on to say that I've never truly tasted what it was like to know ASL inside out, I have been there. I have been a part of the Deaf community. While I was in the Deaf community, I was very lonely since there was not many people within, who could relate to the world the way I do. When I was in the hearing world, I was lonely in a different way, but that was the way I was accustomed to. Having the cochlear implant alleviated this loneliness somewhat, but not wholly.
   
6. Your opinion, somewhat bigoted, about the Deaf community is valued as much as the next person's. Thank you.
   

Re:Questions

[AnDarkon]

I have the Clarion Platinum Series, by Advanced Bionics. It has eight electrodes. I elected to have the simulatenous input, where all eight electrodes would fire simulatenously.

Sidebar: Not many could handle the simulatenous mode. It made me sick for a day, but then I could notice the improvement it made on my hearing.

The microphone is on my head, directly behind my left ear. I'm positive that it's located on my head. I'm somewhat a technological geek and I immediately located the microphone and turning my head does intensify/diminish the sound I'm hearing, if it wasn't ambient noise.

I'm currently fighting with the insurance company since they don't cover speech therapy. They do, however, cover physical therapy and that's how I'm trying to change their classification of `auditory training' so that it would be covered. At $280 per session, it's hard not to watch my wallet become the interest of physicists all over (ie it's becoming inverted into negative space.)

Re:Questions

[kmellis]

In response to each of your points...

1.

"``A true native language'' is the language the person is born into..."

Right. And a person who learns Sign natively is a native Signer. Being deaf is only a compelling entree into that culture - but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to being part of that culture.

2.

"The ``Denied his rightful place'' in the [...] community comment smacks of bigotry. It is the self's sole right to be wherever he wants to be. Getting the cochlear implant was a decision that only I was the utmost qualified to make..."

If you were born fully deaf, and were not allowed to learn Sigh natively, then you were denied your place in what would have been your natural community - since Sign is the only language that a deaf infant is able to acquire as readily as a hearing infant acquires a spoken language. (This matters a great deal because there is mountains of evidence that indicate that there is a fairly small window of opportunity for the developing brain to natively acquire a language.) You didn't make that decision to not learn Sign natively - you were an infant. Someone else made that decision. My comment clearly referred to that long-ago decision, and not at all to your recent one.

3.

"There are two major views on deafness; 1) Deafness is a cultural trait and, 2) Deafness is a disability to be overcome through, but not limited to, social and technological means."

Which is what I had just written in a previous post. And you'll notice that the point I made in reference to this is that the two viewpoints are not logically mutually exclusive - but, politically, they unfortunately seem to be. Clearly, there is some degree of an actual physical disability involved in being deaf. How truly significant that is has been a matter of debate. And, just as obviously, Deaf culture is real. I would disagree with you slightly, however, in directly and deterministicaly linking the physical trait of being deaf and deaf culture. The culture of Deaf culture has arisen from and been supported by the fact that there are a few actual human languages - signed languages - associated with being deaf. There are hearing people who are part of Deaf culture, just as there are deaf people who are not. (There are hearing babies in deaf families who are native signers.) The key thing is to be native or fluent in Sign, and to participate in the culture.

And this is why I think this discussion, for the most part, doesn't really apply to you at all. You're not a native Signer. Perhaps you became very fluent in Sign as a second language - but it's not quite the same, and that's why you were something of an outsider. Your decision to get an implant has nothing near the significance or controversy that this operation has on a baby. The original poster clearly didn't understand this, because he only knows what little he heard from someone probably ridiculing the Deaf community's unease about cochlear implants in babies.

4.

"Getting a cochlear implant does not, in any way, diminish my stature within society in any way. It does send out the message that I'm less of a person without the cochlear implant."

Well, I'm not sure exactly in what context you're saying this. By "society" in your first sentence, do you mean hearing or deaf society? At any rate, as you say more gently, screw whatever society thinks. Do what you think is right for yourself; and, as a personal example, combat whatever prejudices other people may have about either/both being deaf and having an implant.

5.

" While I was in the Deaf community, I was very lonely since there was not many people within, who could relate to the world the way I do. When I was in the hearing world, I was lonely in a different way, but that was the way I was accustomed to. Having the cochlear implant alleviated this loneliness somewhat, but not wholly."

Your experience is not unusual, and it alone (aside from the more fundamental issue of the window of opportunity for language acquisition) is a good argument that raising a deaf child in a hearing family without allowing them to become native signers is unfair to the child. This is because the child will never truly be at home in any community.

My aunt is a reasonably well-known member of the Deaf community. But she is not a native signer. Growing up in a hearing family, she didn't have the opportunity to learn Sign natively at the appropriate age; and then a bit later, she unfortunately was sent, briefly, to one of the notorious speaking-only schools. I believe she learned ASL probably at around the age of six to eight. Later, since she was not completely deaf, she was able to gain some hearing with the aid of hearing aids. So she's long functioned in the hearing community. She basically has two lives, in a sense.

But my point is that, even though she's well-liked, and very active in Deaf issues and politics, she's still always been somewhat of an outsider. That's not her fault. Also, in spite of (I believe) being the first deaf woman in the US to get an MBA, her language skills, particularly writing, are not very good. This is pretty typical for people with her history.

I'm well aware of the bigotry within the Deaf community against non-native Signers and partially deaf people et al. It's abhorrent, but typical of many similar communities. It's human nature. I'm not saying it's right.

Given your history, your decision to get your implant makes a lot of sense and will probably help you find a more comfortable place in hearing culture than you'd likely achieve elsewhere and in any other possible way. I hope it works out well for you.

6.

"Your opinion, somewhat bigoted, about the Deaf community..."

"Bigoted" indicates an unreasoning, negative prejudicial opinion. I don't see how that can accurately describe my attitudes about Deaf culture, or my attitudes about hearing culture from a Deaf culture perspective - which is what I can only guess you must have meant by this comment.

It's a sign of how emotional and highly politicized these issues are that both you and my other interlocuter misread and misunderstood me to be saying offensive and provocative things that I actually wasn't.

Re:Questions

[truefluke]

Being deaf is only a compelling entree into that culture - but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to being part of that culture.

Its nice to try and objectify everything emprirically here, however the outside impression of the 'hearing impaired', 'deaf' 'Deaf' person by mainstream society is pretty much the same. They all get lumped in by default, so the commonality of feeling is shared, and implicity understood by those in and around the Deaf community. It's not artificial. It evolved.
That's more important in the long run, than this overly-analytical thread. I don't wanna say 'screw' anyone. I'm about synthesis. So I have to ignore opinions like yours, no offense. A culture is a bag of things held in common and shared ideals, things that are important to the members. I'd like to believe there's more held in common than not. [and if you try to divert into a thread insisting that it is indeed artificial, then that means its imposed, and who's fault is that?]

The original poster clearly didn't understand this, because he only knows what little he heard from someone probably ridiculing the Deaf community's unease about cochlear implants in babies.

I have no idea who you're referring to here, but it'd better not be me. I can't recall if your 'd/Deaf' or not. I am. I have the physical traits, I have the experiences. So I'm valid, whether you think so or not. I'm from Canada, and I'm living here in the USA. There are differences, but a lot of the things are the same. I've never been _rejected_ by either of the Deaf Communities, I just don't share all the views. They accept that. And I am still involved. Native signer. Non-native signer. I don't think it's really that important. There are some _militant_ 'Deaf Power Now' folks, but you know what, they're not really that popular. Those of us who have a synthesist view don't like that kind of attitude. So it doesn't matter to people like me. It's not going to solve anything.

And I am now finished with this thread. I'm tired of explaining everything over and over in simple, easy to understand terms when it makes no difference. Sorry. I really wish someone else would carry the torch once in a while, I really do.

Re:Questions

[kmellis]

You: "I have no idea who you're referring to here, but it'd better not be me."

Well, you could get off your lazy ass and just follow up the thread to see who it was I was originally responding to.

You: "I'm tired of explaining everything over and over in simple, easy to understand terms when it makes no difference. Sorry. I really wish someone else would carry the torch once in a while, I really do."

What have you explained? All I've been able to discern is your taking things out of context or even willfully misreading them in order to find offense; and then finishing it up with a self-pitying and grandiose comment like that last bit.

By the way, I'm a hearing person and am not a Signer, much less native or fluent. Both you and AnDarkon are jummping to conclusions about who I am and what "camp" I'm in. A hearing bigot? A Deaf bigot? A deaf anti-Deaf bigot? Surely I must be one of these, you think, right? So you look at a few sentences, focus on a few phrases, and then jump to the keyboard. After my response to your initial response to my post, you responded with:

You: "I just felt the tone was a dismissal of signing outright."

But in the post where you thought the "tone was a dismissal of signing outright", I had written in just those two paragraphs, these things:

Me: "...the key point to understand is that Sign is a complete and functional language the equal of any spoken language..."

Me: "...most people don't realize how completely functional a native signer really is..."

Me: "Signed languages develop and evolve pretty much the same way (for the purposes of this discussion) that spoken languages do."

Wow. That's some "tone" of "dismissal of signing outright". (That was sarcasm, by the way, since you're paying so little attention I feel the need to spell everything out.)

You: "A culture is a bag of things held in common and shared ideals, things that are important to the members."

That's an overly broad definition. Everything from "community" to "subculture" to "culture" has those characteristics. I specifically used capital-D "Deaf" in conjunction with "culture" and emphasized the word "culture" intentionally to draw a distinction between mere communities and cultures. There is a gay community and a physics community and a medical community, and they all are subcultures and one can talk about the "physics culture", for example. Each of these is made up of people who have values and ideals in common, shared experiences, etc. But that doesn't make any of them "cultures" in the strongest sense of the word.

In contrast, a shared native language is the single most important correlative to "culture" in the most significant sense. There is an anglophone culture, a francophone culture, and the individuals who make them up share at the deepest personal level all their cultural landmarks. This isn't equally true of gayness, physics, or medicine. But it is arguably true for native Signers. And this is why the issue of Sign as a native language is so pertinent to this discussion. Both because it gives Deaf culture an unqestionable legitimacy, and because it is also for this reason that being deaf is simply not the necessarily debilitating handicap that most hearing people assume it to be.

To conclude, I'll say that I can't tell just what cause it is, exactly, that you think you're carrying the torch for; nor how it is that you think you are doing so. But I posted my original message in order to answer the ignorance revealed in a pretty loaded question by a hearing person about the supposed "political incorrectness" of AnDarkon getting his/her implant.

Re:Questions

[truefluke]

OK. I can live with that. I find it difficult to follow all these threads. I don't know whose is on whose side, anymore, I really don't.

If I offended you, I'm sorry.

Re:Questions

[truefluke]

Right you are. You did come to the defence of that, now that I've calmed down and taken the time to read it again.

That's _my_ problem. Calming down. See, I can't just divorce myself from issues like this all the time and give a neutral answer, because its too close to me. Is it my fault? Yeah. Could I prevent myself from doing that? Yeah.

But you gotta consider that its hard for me to do so. I don't want a pity party, for what I'm about to say. But it's easy for me to 'distrust' anyone who _isn't_ deaf who starts talking about things like this. Heaven forbid that they might actually know what they're talking about. It's a distrust thing. I guess I haven't been able to let down my guard enough to consider that you're not just someone throwing big words around and might actually be able to understand some of these issues.

So thank you for calling me on that bluntly, and I hope that this thread has made a fool out of me enough to at least prove that I find it hard to trust people.

It sucks, but its true.

Re:Questions

[kris_lang]

I'm glad that you have a scalp mounted microphone. At least you can take advantage of headshadowing for sound localization.

While audiobooks may be good for correlating words as written with the percepts transferred through the electronic cochlea, I think that you need to realize that even infants spend more than a year training themselves to work with audio. It will take time.

As for localization, immerse yourself in auditory rich environments. DVDs and movies with subtitles may only help you a little with correlating lip motion and facial changes with speech sounds. But DVDs and movies and televisions will make you misassociate localization cues. This is especially true of movies in theaters. This is because even though the apparent location of the sound sources will change, the actual sound source remains stationary: the speakers in the movie theater or in your television or in your speaker setup.

Even though you may have a limited sense of directional cues available, you should avail yourself of the opportunity to learn as many as you can. I recommend playground areas and dog walking areas: kids and adults will be running around and making noises. Moving sound sources will be associable with the visual stimuli locating these sources in space around you.

Go to a shopping mall and listen to the environment as you walk around. In a two-story mall, this will give you the opportunity to hear sound sources coming from above when you're downstairs, and below when you're upstairs. Unfortunately, you'll also get a lower signal to noise ratio (and a higher Muzak to voice ratio), but it is the real world environment you have to inhabit.

Good luck. I'm sorry about the cost of speech therapy. Too bad the insurers don't realize that cognitive rehab is as important as physical rehabilitation.

Kids reading books + tapes

[oliverthered]

If I was going to learn a foreign language I would try to find reading books for Kids, because they start off simply and slowly using common words with few syllables and repeating them over and over again.

I should imagine there are books like this that come with tapes and CD's although tailored to teaching kids to read, I'm sure they'd be helpful in teaching you to hear/recognise speech.

I've done a few searches

[Anonymous Coward]

This UK site although not specifically aimed at people like you may have some helpful ideas

TV

[crstophr]

Just turn on the closed captioning and watch LOTS of TV. --Chris

global english...

[josepha48]

I interviewed with this company and it may help. They are called globalenglish.com, and they help people in other countries learn english. It may be possible to use this service to help you learn to 'hear' so to speak.

The basic principal is that you say the word or sentance and then it plays it back for you and also tells weather you are right or wrong. It uses IBM viavoice technology and runs with IE under windowns only so if you are not using IE/Windows it may not work for you. It is also a pay service.

Alternatively you could get via voice or something like that and proactice speaking and seeing how well it gets your speach and then playing it back.

One more thing would be the radio or tv. Listen to others speak on talk tv/radio may help. Music is also supposed to be good therapy..

Karaoke

[linzeal]

Since I have less qaulifications than you I will admonish the man further to consider the source, but anyways.

The only thing remotely that I have observed helping someone in your situation. I met a girl who had recently come out of a coma, and had to regain all her senses. She sung terribly at karaoke, but spoke beautiful english.

Repetitive Phonics

[LowellPorter]

Repetitive reading phonics drills is how many students learn to read at a young level (4 to 7 years old). They go down a chart and repeat the sound made for letter combinations (ie PH says 'F', ing, tion and the like). I was in a church school that used this method to teach me to read. This might help you learn to recognize letter combinations with their sounds. (I realize you can already read). The school I had used the A Beka ciriculum which has one of best phonics programs around. Their website is www.abeka.com

Sound quality of a CI system

[compwizrd]

I have a severe binaural hearing loss myself, complete deafness over about 1500 hertz, normal hearing up till around 1100hz, and a steep dropoff in between. Conventional hearing aids don't help me, as the hearing aid mold blocks the lower frequencies, leaving me worse off than before.

I looked into the cochlear implant earlier this year, but from the research I did, I'd be worse off than what I have now.

What I'm looking for is information on the sound quality difference between normal hearing, and current CI technology. I found a page online with sample mp3's, from about a year or two ago, and even with a 32 channel implant, the sound in the mp3's was still horribly distorted and garbled.(it's not the encoding of the mp3's, before you mention that)

Has the processor technology improved?

Having 30db loss across the audiogram is good, but not if the entire spectrum sounds like a badly tuned AM radio. :)

I would hate to go through the implant procedure, and discover I'm worse off than before.

Subtitles on DVDs?

[argel]

What about watching DVD movies with subtitles turned on. The text doesn't always exactly match what is said but most of the time you'd get to read lips, see the text, and hear it. Some movies also have descriptions of background audio events (e.g. The Mummy) that you might find useful as well.

Other's have mentioned audio tapes/CDs, but I would think being able to read lips would be better for you?

Music lessions

[bluGill]

Music lessions might be a good idea. Start with something like violin (Guitar, Mandolin, piano, flute, tuba), where you don't have to speak. It gets your ear and mind used to hearing sounds. Listen to your instructor play, and practice playing what he plays. Get a tape recorder and re-play your lessions. Once you are used to listening to people take voice lessions. I'm sure after 33 years of deafness you have trouble making yourself understood, and voice lessions are a good way to help. Many adults take voice lessions in music, so there is no embarressment in getting professional help, like there would be with a theropist. (If you won't be embarresed get the theropy now, music lessions is second to theropy, but easier to admit)

Most of all, the more your practice, the better you will be. If you discover you can't stand music, then music is worthless. However most people enjoy it, and many can turn that enjoyment into motivation to practice, which is really what I'm getting at.

TV!

[orthogonal]

First, realize that even for hearing persons, non-aural cues play a not insignificant part in interpreting speech. This is mainly seeing lip movement but also includes facial expression, body language, and context.

Second, I'd not rely on closed captioning for longer than you need too. Nuerological research seems to suggest that one can read, and one can listen to speech, but not both at once (Klawans mentions this as part of personal anecdote (but not as deriving from experimental data) in his collection of nuerology stories Defending the Cavewoman). Also, as you've probably realized by now, subtitles are often not word-by-word or sound-by-sound faithful to the originial speech: "Ah, well... we, um, ap-approached the, the cri-defendant" -> "Well, we approached the defendant."

Perhaps you should try just watching a lot of TV -- and engaging in spoken conversation -- without any closed-captioning or subtitles. Give it time: there's a lot of neural re-wiring to be done, and that requires time and training, just as taking up a sport or a craft does.

OT: Aren't Bionicear implants unavailable now?

[ivi]

Hmmm... haven't I just heard that BionicEar's
cochlear implants (or some of them) have just
been pulled off the market... and that the co
has to re-apply for approval to sell them, ie
after a finding, that they cause some sort of
ear infection(s)...?

A local (ie Australian) company is gearing up
its production facilities, by way of offering
its product, ie until BionicEar gets the 'OK'
[from FDA] to put its modified product -back-
on the US market...

FWIW, I seem to recall that it was the "posi-
tioner" part, in BionicEar's previous product
that's been deemed cause of the infection(s).

Anybody else have more bits of the story be-
hind this story...?

Write a Book, ie after you succeed...

[ivi]

I'm sure that more & more people will find
themselves in this person's position; it's
going to be good to 'share notes' with the
next generation of cochlear implantees....

Do write up your experiences & (hopefully)
save others some of the need to 'reinvent'
the wheel, so to speak, to new hearing....

PS As some are aware, use of cochlear im-
plants, to enable people who've never had
the chance to hear to begin doing that,
is actully controvertial for some in the
deaf community, who feel that it's good
to be deaf...

Comments...?

Actually there's a good movie about the subject...

[Opusnbill7]

There's a movie (documentary) called The Sound and Fury that came out a couple years ago about this very subject. Excellent movie and helps to point out the different views about cochlear implants. May not find it at Blockbuster, but your public library may have a copy (if not, you can always get it from amazon or B&N).

STRONGLY recommend it to anyone considering the issue or even who has a hearing-impaired loved one. Very educational and interesting.

Re:Actually there's a good movie about the subject

[compwizrd]

Was run on PBS a few months back.

Do you have one of these?

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed you have the same brand.
Static Helps the Deaf to Hear