Technology that lets deaf people hear has a downside: it threatens sign languages

BORN profoundly deaf, William Mager, a film-maker, gained some hearing in December. It was technical wizardry, not a miracle: a cochlear implant in his head which turns sounds into nerve signals. Switched on in a glossy central London hospital, it prompted “probably the worst day of my life”, he says. Harsh, robotic sounds bombarded his brain. Now things are improving. The noises are becoming “meatier and richer” as his brain learns to interpret the din.

Around 220,000 people worldwide have had cochlear implants since the devices were approved in the 1980s. They typically allow deaf people around 70% of normal hearing. That might seem like unalloyed good news: surely some hearing is better than none?

But not all deaf people are keen or grateful. Some protested outside hospitals when the new devices came in. It is demeaning, they feel, to be viewed as a problem to be fixed. And the gadgets threaten their culture. Though Mr Mager still uses sign language, people with the implant and their friends, colleagues and families need it less. That undermines the struggle by users of the 200-odd sign languages to be recognised as linguistic minorities.

New technologies mean more worries for deaf activists. A recent paper by the University of Miami concluded that in a decade most of the genes linked to deafness will be identified. That could lead to easier treatment (or, some fear, the abortion of fetuses bearing those genes). Implants are getting cleverer, too. A three-year-old from North Carolina is the first child in America to have one wired directly into his brainstem. A touching video of the boy hearing his father speak for the first time has gone viral.

Yet Joe Valente, a deaf professor of early-years education at Pennsylvania State University, points at research showing the risk of infection from cochlear implants, particularly for the young. Deaf children with implants who use only spoken language perform worse at school than their peers who learn sign language. Cristina Hartmann, a deaf lawyer from New York who received her implant at the age of six, complains that even after a decade of speech therapy she did not talk and hear like a normal person. And 70% hearing is still a handicap: certain pitches can be inaudible and noisy places confusing.

More than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, who typically take decisions with little knowledge of deaf culture or politics. The idea that deafness is not a disability, for example, strikes many outsiders as perverse. Two cases in recent years of deaf couples looking for congenitally deaf sperm donors to ensure deaf offspring prompted derisive media coverage. Yet deaf culture is not just the preserve of ideologues. In sign-language circles, each person has a sign name, usually based on physical appearance. A man with a big nose, for instance, might be referred to with a Pinocchio-like gesture. Distinct social customs abound: switching lights on and off to get a room’s attention, for example. Deaf raves, with organ-shaking bass and sign-language rappers, have large followings; so does deaf theatre. Thousands of athletes will attend the Deaflympics in Bulgaria this month.

Technology could wipe out all that. In America the share of deaf children taught by sign language has fallen from 55% to 40% in the past decade. Other countries show similar patterns. Deafness will not disappear, says Trevor Johnston, a linguistics professor at Macquarie University in Australia, but it needs at least to be studied as a cultural relic before it withers.

Colin Allen, president of the World Federation of the Deaf, a human-rights group based in Helsinki, says the real worry is not about the technology itself, but the perception that sign language is redundant. A UN convention on disability may provide some protection: the deaf lobby in Kosovo used it when campaigning for legal protection of their language and culture. In South Africa it helped shape national policy which encourages school-leavers fluent in sign language to teach deaf students.

Come again?
The irony is that, even as sign language declines among deaf people, it is attracting new adherents among the hearing. A book called “Baby Signs”, published in America in 1996, spawned a business that teaches signing to hearing children in over 30 countries. It claims that hearing children who learn some sign language are ahead of their peers by 12 IQ points at the age of eight. Britain plans to introduce a GCSE (an exam usually taken by 16-year-olds) in sign language. In America 90,000 college students study it: a figure that has risen eightfold since the millennium, and almost as many as still study German.

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Frisky Feline said:

Look at the comments ... interesting.

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Frisky Feline said:

Look at the comments ... interesting.

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shel90 said:

As usual...they correlate with hearing equating to more success which will breed more audist- like thinking which will lead to more discrimination for those who don't have CIs or weren't able to benefit from them. Yep, what a lovely society we live in.

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EPIC BIOSONICS is the creator of a new type of cochlear implant, "The Epic". What makes it so unique compared to a regular cochlear implant is that it requires less time to implant, it is smaller and lighter; it has no external components; it's power source is designed to last a lifetime and it contains 48 versus 20-24 electrodes or channels.

The Epic Cochlear Implant will be fully implanted into the middle ear in a shorter surgical procedure than a conventional implant. In this minor operation, a microphone is implanted under the skin in the ear canal. This picks up sound and sends it to a speech-processing device which is similarly implanted under the skin behind the ear. The speech processor converts the sound into electrical signals. These signals are sent to an electrode array, which is implanted in the cochlea of the inner ear. Here they stimulate the remaining nerve cells responsible for hearing. Hearing occurs when the brain receives information from these nerve cells via the auditory nerve (the nerve which connects the cochlea to the brain).

The device is expected to weigh less than three grams and measure approximately 3 cm by 5 cm. This means that it is small enough to be implanted into a newborn baby, allowing the hearing part of the brain to be stimulated. According to McFarland, "This will facilitate speech and language development from an early age. The later a child is implanted, the more difficult it is for the brain to adapt to hearing stimuli, and the more difficult language and speech are for the child to develop." By being able to intervene early, a child stands a greater chance of being able to learn speech as adeptly as her hearing peers.

As this "internal cochlear implant" will require no hard-wired external devices, no sockets, no wires, it will stand up to use 24 hours a day, seven days a week even in harsh environments, i.e. swimming. In contrast, cochlear implants on the market today have speech processors that must be worn on the body or behind the ear. These can be bulky, cumbersome and can't be used in many environments. The Epic will use less than a millionth of the power required by a light bulb. This is partly due to the fact the speech processing chip utilizes a new hybrid analog/digital technology which requires much less power than a totally digital device.

The device will use a miniature rechargeable battery that is designed to last a lifetime. The battery will require no more than 1-2 hours of recharging per week. According to McFarland the rumour that rubbing a bone behind the ear will recharge this device is completely false. Instead it will be recharged with an external battery that transmits the charge to the internal battery using radio frequency and no wires. This internal battery employs a new technology that does not involve a liquid electrolyte. Therefore, there is no risk of leakage.

The quality of sound in this device should be an improvement from conventional cochlear implants because of the configuration and placement of the electrode array in the cochlea. While existing cochlear implants have 16, 20 or 22 electrodes, the Epic Cochlear Implant has 48.

The Epic Cochlear Implant was originally conceived by ENT surgeon, Dr. Alan Lupin in 1988. He patented his idea in 1994. In 1997, Mr. Peter Berrang a Canadian businessman and scientist, joined with Dr. Lupin to form Epic Biosonics Inc.

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drphil said:

Whether one wants to "use ASL et al" when ones become DEAF-surely one's choice within the context of one's social environment.
Having a Cochlear Implant doesn't "change" that choice!

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Jane B. said:

How much does the drastic difference in the grammar for ASL and English play in getting new parents into using ASL? When you write out ASL as American Sign Language I would think that many would expect it to be very similar if not exact.

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Deaf children with implants who use only spoken language perform worse at school than their peers who learn sign language.

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Salarian said:

I have to strongly disagree with this.

In the states I'm not aware of how they handle deaf children in their education system but this statement is just wrong.

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Foxrac said:

I believe that ENT doctors are greater threat to existence of ASL because they tell hearing parents that they don't have to learn ASL if their deaf child receives CI and use oral language.

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shel90 said:

Totally agree...that's why I have a huge mistrust of them.

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