7 thoughts on “Sound”

  1. One of those things that I didn’t think would happen in my lifetime (along with a treatment for AIDS). And both of those proof that with all the venal sins in science, great things still happen.
    I find it particularly fascinating that I think I see Jonathan’s mouth move in the shape of a “hi.”

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  2. bj, some would see this as a venal sin… I’m not sure where the Deaf community stands on cochlear implants these days, but I’ve read some positions that equate these implants with cultural genocide.
    Gah, I hate harshing the buzz. So I’ll just say personally that this is amazing. The way babies interact with their environment and learn language is just so impressive. I think Jonathan probably is mouthing “hi.”
    (Best job I ever had was working in a lab where they studied how babies learned language.)

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  3. I watched this, too, while it was buzzing about. I feel differently about it. Actually, my son is deaf. And he has a cochlear implant. I think it’s awesome technology. But we kind of approach things a little differently.
    My current assessment of the Deaf community is that the average opinion of the CI is “meh” to vehemently against. Most people will say that they personally don’t agree, but respect parents so long as they also expose their CI kids to ASL/Deaf culture.
    Which is actually kind of what we do. A bilingual/bicultural approach. We’re part of the 2% of CI families who do this. I don’t know, something about putting all my faith for all communication in a piece of machinery for the rest of my kid’s life–not cool. Not to mention that Deaf culture is cool! And I want him to be part of that, too.
    But anyway, back to the video. It’s clear that the baby responded to sound. That’s actually pretty amazing. When my son was activated (2yo), he looked up when he heard and looked around with a puzzled expression on his face. At one point, he climbed into daddy’s lap. He didn’t know what it was. People assume that deaf kids want to hear. So they think that when they’re activated they’ll be happy about it. The baby in the video is so young there aren’t even those expectations yet.
    Yes, the baby responded to sound. But I’ll tell you, I swear that baby was acting like a deaf baby. He looked at his mother’s mouth. He was taking in her expressions with his eyes and responding to her based on what he saw. He didn’t have enough experience with sound to assign it as a positive or negative experience. Her face got excited, he got excited.
    Like I said, the CI is cool. What I don’t like is when people jump on it as the panacea to their child’s deafness, implanting kids so young they don’t even really have a chance to dig into deafness and understand the choices they are making. I mean we’re talking major surgery of drilling into a perfectly HEALTHY kid’s head.
    The kid doesn’t have to lose any language time, if they just signed. So that baby lost language for 8 months until he was activated. And now he has to learn how to make sense of sound. It’s not like turning on ears, you know. The sound will always be mediated through a machine that has 30-some channels to imitate the hundreds of channels the hair cells transmit to the brain. Some kids do great with their CIs, some will never quite get it.
    Sorry, Laura, didn’t mean to write a tome of a post. Just being one of those marginal “special ed” moms, can’t help being a little soap-boxy. I rarely, rarely comment here, but have been reading since yr kids were obsessed with Thomas. Love the blog.

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  4. I’m actually quite familiar with the controversy in the Deaf community. I do think one of the venal sins of science is the overselling of interventions: “Cochlear implants will fix your deaf child!” As you point out that’s simply not true. And there are interventions short of surgery (early signing, for example) that are important and cannot be replaced by cochlear implants.
    I made these arguments with more vehemence 20 years ago, when I thought CI was a pie in the sky idea that offered little practical help, and might mislead parents, violating the bedrock principle of do no harm. Now though, CI can offer real help for remediation, and unfortunately, it’s not a medical decision that can wait for the child to make as an adult. The growing consensus these days is that prosthesis work through plasticity of the neural system that is more robust in infants. That means they will be more effective at a younger age.
    Medically, this certainly raises ethical concerns. I think that now, given the variable success of CI, the availability of other interventions, . . . , I still think parents should have the un-coerced right to make their decision for their own children. No one should sell CI as a magic bullet (and people should communicate with their children from birth, not wait for CI.)
    My introduction to the Deaf culture (many many years ago now) occurred through testing children for Ushers syndrome, a genetic syndrome in which congenitally deaf children develop progressive blindness. Although I understand that Deafness is not life threatening, I do regard it as a disability. That doesn’t change my opinion that parents get to decide what they think for their own children. But it does mean that I think the CI scientists have produced a miracle (imperfect though it might be.)
    I also think the implants are going to get better and better. They will benefit from the computer revolution (more channels, better analysis), the nano revolution, the sound revolution. People will have to deal with the changes this will bring.
    I love sign (though I’m only a pidgen signer myself). It’s a beautiful language; I think the culture is important, for it’s own intrinsic value, as well as the help it offers for those whom CI will not help, for early years. And, as with other technological changes, I think we can’t stop the changes and need to preserve the good while coping with the change.

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  5. I agree with you bj. Esp with young implantation. I just think you can do both. And I know for some families that simply just isn’t going to work. Some people are more open to diversity than others. *shrug* I don’t like the panacea approach, and I don’t like the idea “well we have the CI, why sign?” approach. Or that signing is somehow “settling”. But the truth is, you get a diagnosis of profound deaf and the audiologist gives you a CI pamphlet and that’s it. It’d be great of a more wholistic picture was offered.
    I do think the CI is here to stay, and I’m a huge fan of technology. And I think Deaf culture is slowly figuring out how to deal with this. (like with hearing aids years ago) There are many ways to be Deaf.

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  6. There are some overlaps with debates within the autism community and medication.
    Since last September, we’ve experimented with various drugs and Ian. (Ethical issues right there. Since each kid is different, parents have to run tests on their own kids.) After several months, our conclusions are that the meds helped Ian at first. It did improve his speech slightly, but then the effect leveled off. His handwriting improved and he was less distracted in school. However, it also took away his sense of humor, which is vital part of being a human being. It also made him more compulsive. We increased the dosage and changed drugs a few weeks ago. As a result, he bit off all his fingernails until they bled and he spent hours and hours drawing comic books in a hyper-focused way. It was scary. Now, he’s drug free and the teacher is annoyed that he daydreams in class. He’s also getting straight A’s with almost no effort. She’s pushing us to medicate him again, so that he’ll be more normal. But I’m not sure that Ian wants to be more normal.

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