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

DVD

[turboalberta]

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

RA

Venue

[Evro]

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

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.

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.

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.

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?