To Implant or Not to Implant??

[faire_jour]

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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.

**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?

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]

**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?

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

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.

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.

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]

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.

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

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

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpKKYBkJ9Hw]Cochlear implant: simulation on speech and music - YouTube[/ame]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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

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.

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

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

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpKKYBkJ9Hw]Cochlear implant: simulation on speech and music - YouTube[/ame]

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.

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]

no one has said that they have typical hearing or "full fidelity" as you like to say.

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]

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.

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]

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.

Do you even understand what you just said?

 

[faire_jour]

Wirelessly posted

no one has said that they have typical hearing or "full fidelity" as you like to say.

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.

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]

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.

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]

i have sat and watched them test my child. She hears at 15 db, that is audiologically considering hearing in the "normal range".

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

She has also had discrim testing that clearly shows her discriminating all the sounds of speech.

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]

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.

And?

 

[Mountain Man]

From the next room, she caught that CI "simulation" and called out in protest "What is that nasty noise, it's icky!"

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]

And?

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]

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.....

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]

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?

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.