GrendelQ

Cloggy's article might help with your pro/con:

There's a section in which parents' initial high expectations by and large were found to match up with their experiences and outcomes, with future concern expressed in the area of literacy. I think it says that a tenth did not find their expectations met by experience.

The children's teachers scored the students a bit lower against 4 scales. Some reasons were put out there for why teachers didn't score the students as high as parents, but more studies are forthcoming to dive into this: the report states that the teachers may not be familiar with CIs or that the children are "still deaf," they may not be accommodating them, assuming that they would be interacting exactly as hearing students, and some of the teachers indicated that they felt that the kids without Auslan had better outcomes, so they may not be fully supporting those kids who are bilingual or may be downgrading scores on those who use sign.

__________________

Deafness

__________________
This advertising will not be shown in this way to registered members.
Register your free account today and become a member on AllDeaf.com

posts from hell

Let the deaf people answer this one?

Mountain Man

Classic example:

She might have access to enough speech sounds to effectively use spoken language, but she doesn't have access to all speech sounds and certainly not to the "level of a typical hearing child".

Another common claim is that children with cochlear implants have "natural access to spoken language". No, they really don't. They have access, yes, but it's not natural, and the vast majority of children with CI require years of extensive spoken language therapy to get the most out of their implants; also, studies show that early gains can be lost once the child stops language therapy. A child with genuine natural access to language typically does not require this kind of training and support.

Anybody who makes either of these claims is either misinformed or deliberately spreading misinformation. This is the kind of thing Jillio is referring to when she says that "Overestimation is rampant in parental report" and is the catalyst behind our most heated arguments here at AllDeaf.com.

GrendelQ

Fortunately I'm a bit more familiar with my child's test results and how she has been measured, as well as to what her access to sound has been like than MountainMan (who is a hearing parent of an HOH or deaf child, not sure which).

And as you can see from the report Cloggy (who is a hearing parent of a child with CIs) posted that Jillio (who is a hearing parent of a deaf adult) has referenced so often as 'proving her point', expectations were largely met or surpassed by experience. Not "overestimated" at all. I've found that to be the case in my experience, too. We went in with very low expectations, but have been astounded by the overwhelmingly positive outcomes. And fortunately in our case, we have very knowledgable teachers who give even more glowing report than we would, ourselves.

__________________

faire_jour

Wirelessly posted

actually, you are wrong. My child (and the majority of kids with implants) have access to all the sounds of speech. How do i know that? Because she is given speech discrimination testing that shows that she does.

also, i see that you object to the "normal hearing levels" phrase as well. Well, "normal hearing levels" are defined by audiology as less than 15 db, and since our children hear at that level, what would you prefer we say?

jillio

And you are a parent. You have parental bias, and as Cloggy's article, and other research show, inflate and use misattribution in reporting functioning of your child.

I guess you overlooked the part about the variance in professional report and parental report. LOL. Not surprising. Not to mention, parental report is the least reliable measure to use.

But that's okay. I hope he accesses the thread. The research concerns are all in there, as well as the fact that this is an uplublished report from researchers uninvolved with deafness at any level..

And thanks for bringing it up: I am the hearing parent of a Deaf adult, and I also work with deaf kids on a daily basis as a professional. My experience certainly has greater scope across the population than the parent of a pre-schooler. Thanks for mentioning it.

jillio

Parental bias and misattribution. It is a proven construct. Why do you have such a problem admitting that you are not objective when it comes to your own child, nor do you know how to take your observations and analyze them from a subjective perspective? The more you deny, the more it confirms your complete inability to be subjective.

But, hey, thanks for confirming what I was explaining, what Cloggy's report showed, and what MM said.

faire_jour

Wirelessly posted

i'm not the person who gives the discrim or audiological testing, so how am i inflating it? These are opinion questions. These can be measured.

jillio

**smh**

If you truly don't get it, no amount of explaining is going to help at this point. But if you truly don't get it, you have no business claiming to mentor others.

Where's deafguy been lately? Give up his account?

Mountain Man

It is a physical impossibility for a CI to give access to the full range of speech sounds. We're talking 24 electrodes versus thousands of cilia in the inner ear. CI allows reception of sounds at a limited number of points along the speech banana, but that's a long ways from giving access to all speech sounds. Individuals with CI hear with considerably less fidelity than natural hearing.

This is not presented as being for or against CI, it's simply a statement of fact. That you and Grendel and others react so strongly to this kind of unbiased information does nothing but reinforce Jillio's observation.

Look, it's O.K. to be in favor of CI while being fully aware of the limitations.

faire_jour

Wirelessly posted

when an audiologist does discrimination testing and tests all the individual sounds contained in spoken english and the individual is able to discriminate them all, is there another way to interpret that than "they are able to discriminate all the sounds in spoken english"?

Frisky Feline

yeah it's getting old. i sort of miss deafguy because i have so much doubt questions to ask. i guess i will never find out afterall. lol

faire_jour

Wirelessly posted

no one has said that they have typical hearing or "full fidelity" as you like to say. What i HAVE said is that they are able to hear and in my child's case, discrimination between, the sounds of spoken english.

yes, there are negatives to choosing an implant foryour child, but lack of access to spoken language is not one.

Mountain Man

Read my post again again. I'm not talking about expectations.

Here's a simulation of what a cochlear implant sounds like:


It's an inarguable fact that current CI technology is simply no match for natural hearing in terms of frequency response and fidelity.

Like I told fj, it's O.K. to be in favor of CI while being aware of the limitations.

jillio

Hey, MM....got a question for you? Are you biased in relationship to your own child? I know I certainly am.

And I think everyone knows that when discussing actual functional levels and benefits, expectation is the least reliable measure of all. It creates more bias.

jillio

It is for many that have been implanted. You fail to take into consideration the number of people (children included) that do not receive results that allow them access to spoken language.

faire_jour

Wirelessly posted

and every CI user i have asked says that those similations are garbage. Have you ever bothered to ask?

again, if you read what we are actually writing you will see that we do not claim that they have typical hearing. Please respond to what we actually say, rather than your assumptions of our beliefs.

Mountain Man

Grendel implied as much when she said that her 5-year old "measured [at a] level of a typical hearing child, including access to all speech sounds," and you did too when you said, "My child (and the majority of kids with implants) have access to all the sounds of speech."

CI allows access to speech sounds, yes, but doesn't allow access to all speech sounds. Listen to the simulation I posted above and please tell me that even the 22-channel simulation represents "all speech sounds". If CI allowed natural access to all speech sounds then there would no need for language therapy. It's like opening a door part way. It's access, but not full access. If your audiologist is telling you differently then frankly they're not being completely honest with you.

Babyblue

Speaking of functional level. If you expect too much, then it will set the child up for failure.

Which I have seen in many children that have parents that have higher expectation than the child can function.

jillio

Do you even understand what you just said?

faire_jour

Wirelessly posted

i have sat and watched them test my child. She hears at 15 db, that is audiologically considering hearing in the "normal range". She has also had discrim testing that clearly shows her discriminating all the sounds of speech. I don't need a simulation. I have objective testing.

jillio

You sitting and watching them test your child actually has no validity for anything except knowing how to sit and watch them test your child.

GrendelQ

My daughter's just come in the door and we have to get her ready for an upcoming recital, so although I'd like to respond more fully, I just have a moment. From the next room, she caught that CI "simulation" and called out in protest "What is that nasty noise, it's icky!"

You can talk to some CI recipients who have only recently lost their hearing and have a good memory for comparison to get a sense of what sound via CI can be like for them. But as our surgeon once told us, no one can say exactly what the sound is like that a child implanted young hears. We can measure whether or not he can discriminate enough to know the full range of sound and if it's differentiated from other distinct sounds, we can measure at what volume he hears. But the human brain is amazing at turning those mechanical waves we hear into what we think of as sound, whether it's interpreting the output from those little hairs in our cochlea or from a silicon electrode array nearby.

A couple of years ago Li's piano teacher mentioned an amazing discovery: if she sang notes for my daughter to play, and sang one note but spoke the name of another (in error), Li would hesitate a moment at the discrepancy, but would then play the actual note sung. So she was not playing memorized notes, but was actively discriminating the sound of each note played or sung. Our audiologist shook her head and said that this was so often the case, that you wouldn't expect a child with a CI to be able to discriminate to notes right next to each other like that, but that the human body paired with technology can surpass expectations of what's scientifically possible and our simulations of what the sound might be like.

__________________

Mountain Man

dB and frequency are two different things. You do know this, don't you?

There's a disconnect between what you think you're seeing and what you're really seeing. When a CI is in place, the eardrum is still responding to whatever sound wave is hitting it. That's simple physics. However, a person with CI is typically not able to distinguish between closely grouped frequencies because the CI processes them as a single frequency. To put it another way, it is taking the entire range of frequencies and presenting them as a limited number of frequencies (typically 24 in a modern CI).

So while you could say, in theory, that a CI user has access to to the full range of speech sounds, this does not give an accurate picture of what they're actually hearing.

Does that make sense?

Sunshine

Is great Li hear so well, truly.

jillio

And?

Mountain Man

What's your point? The simulation is not going to sound the same to her as it does to us. It's like having a color blind man look through a filter that simulates color blindness and having him declare, "But that's not how it looks to me at all!" Serious question: How would he know?

GrendelQ

Oh, OK, didn't know you were interested, Jillio but as soon as we're back I'm happy to tell you lots more about Li's access to sound.....

__________________

jillio

I'm more interested in the implications of the stories you tell about your daughter as anything more than stories about your daughter. What purpose exactly do these stories mean other than you are a mom who is very excited to be a mom and loves to tell little stories about your daughter?

GrendelQ

You can also take a look at one very practical means of assessing what's heard: how she sounds. Output is going to reflect what she hears. So if she's robotic, you can assume that's what she's hearing. If she sounds melodic ... that's how she hears. She's extremely melodic.

__________________