Cochlear Implants And Other Communication Disorders

     A cochlear implant is an electronic device that restores hearing for people anywhere from hard of hearing to the profoundly deaf. The cochlear implant is surgically implanted under the skin behind the ear. The surgeon puts the electrode array inside the inner ear and than inside the cochlea. The implant works by a device outside the ear, which rests on the skin behind the ear. It is held upright by a magnet and is also connected by a lead to a sound professor.

Cochlear Implants are an object that is very controversial in the deaf community. “A Cochlear Implants is a device that provdes direct electrical stimulation to the auditory (hearing) nerve in the inner ear.” (“Cochlear Implants”) Cochlear Implants bypass the damaged hair cells, and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Depending on when the Cochlear Implant is implanted it allows people to hear sounds, and sometimes even their own voice. While it does not cure hearing loss or deafness, it does allow people to hear. On more technical terms a Cochlear Implant includes parts like a microphone, speech processor, and a transmitter which each play a different part in the Cochlear Implant. The microphone picks up sounds, sends them to the speech processer, and then the speech processor analyzes and digitized the sound signal, thus sending them to a transmitter worn on the head. The debate of whether or not Cochlear Implants are right in the deaf community is one that has been going on for years. People believe having Cochlear Implants are a good thing, because they allow deaf people to communicate with hearing people, it allows people who are not helped by conventional hearing aids to be helped, and it creates new possibilities for deaf people. However there are also people that argue that having a Cochlear Implant is a bad thing, because it proposes the idea that deaf people need to be fixed, it can give deaf people false hope, and it proposes the idea that deaf people have a

To start with, cochlear implants won’t change the person’s identity because it’s a helpful device in which won’t change the individual’s physical aspects. According to the movie Sound and Fury documentary, the child Peter was given a cochlear implant after a few months of birth. Peter’s surgery was a success in which he continued being who he is even after given an implant. The implant can be easily put back on the child and even removed in which he would be back to normal. Another reason why the cochlear implant won’t change the person’s identity because it is meant for someone deaf to actually hear. According to Source A, its states that “ Some commentators attacked the medical profession's role in the creation of such negative images of

A Cochlear Implant is an electronic device that partially restores hearing in people who have severe hearing loss due to damage of the inner ear and who receive limited benefit from hearing aids (http://www.cochlear.com/wps/wcm/connect/au/home/understand/hearing-and-hl/hl-treatments/cochlear-implant). In some cases there are patients whose hearing did not adjust correctly, having a risk of developing a virus, complications after the surgery, the benefits of sign language without a cochlear implant and lastly children or adults with cochlear implants may not even develop a good speech. There are many positive and negative articles I have read on cochlear implants. As a parent you are not only putting your child at risk, you are also withdrawing them from the deaf community, the one they were naturally born into. I do not support cochlear implants, children should not be implanted until they are grown to the point where they can make their own choice

Most doctors recommend that children with cochlear implant only use spoken language as a method of communication so they can maximize the benefits from the cochlear implant. However, the popular method of communication for children with cochlear implants is total communication which is the integration of oral communication and ASL. Although Heather Artinian was fluent in ASL before she received her cochlear implant, she was able to communicate with hearing and deaf people through both ASL and spoken language after years of intensive speech therapy (Aronson, Sound and Fury: Six Years Later). When cochlear implant users take it off, they cannot hear any sounds so they are technically still deaf. Even though they are able to hear sounds, cochlear implant recipients will not be able to identify themselves as hearing individuals. When they bridge the gap between the deaf and hearing world, they can still be a part of both cultures without defining themselves as a part of only one culture (TedX: The Heather World). Therefore, the cochlear implant can be a great device for deaf people who want to stay in the Deaf community but still be able to take advantage of additional opportunities in the hearing

A cochlear implant is an implanted medical device for the deaf or hard of hearing that do not benefit from the traditional hearing aid. It is composed of an internal device that is implanted in the recipient’s head and an external device that is the sound processor. The sound processor collects sound and then transmits it to the implanted device, which then sends it directly to the brain to be interpreted as language. During the time that I was choosing a hearing solution for my daughter I experienced a lot of negative opinions from the deaf culture (community of deaf people who share sign language among other things). They seem to be against parents choosing to have their small children implanted. The deaf culture presumes

Cochlear implants consists of three external parts: a microphone, a speech processor, and a transmitter. The internal parts include: a receiver and stimulator and an array of up to 22 electrodes, depending on how much amplification is needed. Cochlear implants work by bypassing all the damaged parts of the ear to directly stimulate the tiny hair cells on the cochlea that direct sound frequencies to the auditory nerve. (ASHA 2013)

2) I feel another great achievement in the last fifty years has been the cochlear implant. This is a surgically implanted in a patient’s cochlea in their ear that is deaf or severally hearing impaired, because of damage to the sensory cells in their cochlea. www.cochlear.com/‎

There are many things that people in the hearing world take for granted every day, such as verbal communication, using a telephone or something as simple as the feeling you get when your favorite song comes on the radio. To a person that has been completely immersed in the deaf community, it may be easy to view the sense of sound as unnecessary. As a member of the haring community it would seem nearly impossible to live a day without sound. Cochlear implants are devices that help a person who is deaf gain hearing to some degree, and in some cases nearly full hearing. This new technology has become very controversial throughout both the hearing, and the deaf world.

Deafness or hard of hearing, is defined by the medical society as a disability, but those who are diagnosed with the disability think otherwise. They think of themselves as a community, embrace it as an identity, or a culture with their own language, sign language, and they believe their community is being threaten. They label themselves as a minority endangered of being wiped out because of one leading cause, cochlear implants. Those serious about their ideals of their community see cochlear implants as a threat, because cochlear implants are considered as cure. Countless number of controversies over cochlear implants have been brought up, but the Deaf community should see cochlear implants as gift for patients rather than an extreme threat.

The American Medical Association, which happens to be the largest association of physicians, stated, “The main concern of the cochlear implant supporters is for the deaf child to have access to the mainstream, or ‘normal’ hearing world”. In fact, the AMA continues to state that the benefits from a cochlear implantation ranges from a person being able to detect sounds to understanding lip reading. It’s understandable how important it is for hearing parents to be able to communicate with their deaf child because being deaf is a communication barrier. Hearing parents would be giving their deaf child unlimited opportunities throughout their life to achieve equal amounts of success as the next hearing person. However, trying to normalize a child against can be increasingly more harmful to the child’s physical, mental, and intellectual stability. Rather than helping, most parents in these cases can cause their child to be less accepting and comfortable about being deaf instead of demonstrating to them that being deaf does not mean you can not have a normal life. Besides hearing parents can find a way to close the communication barrier with their child by learning sign

surrounding cochlear implants in infants, and if parents making permanent decisions for their children’s futures are a violation of their child’s rights. As I discussed earlier, cochlear implants have the ability to completely combat the effect deafness would have on development in infancy and childhood.

Claire is now transitioning into preschool, and her parents are worried about what Claire's first school experience will be like but luckily for Claire her new teacher, Ms. Williams, is a veteran preschool teacher and in the past, Ms. Williams has taught students with disabilities who use alternative communication systems but from what I read in the article Ms. Williams doesn't have any experience in working with children cochlear implant nevertheless she is very eager to learn and work with Claire. Ms. Williams seems a bit nervous to work with Claire and has several questions about cochlear implants. Ms. Williams has heard that the cochlear implant devices are very expensive and she is worried about simply keeping track of Claire's device, she also worries about the troubleshooting of the device if something goes wrong, is there a difference between teaching a child with a cochlear implant and teaching other children with disabilities. Although Ms. Williams is anxious to learn more about cochlear implants and how to best support Claire's developing listening and communication skills. Ms. Williams assumes Claire will need a variety of visual supports and she wonders about the different types of visual supports and accommodations that Claire might

Imagine being profoundly deaf and being told by your doctor that you won't be able to hear certain voices or sounds in your life. Imagine living with that statement every day, and knowing that you won’t be able to hear the whispers in the background or birds chirping when taking a nice walk. Until one day, everything has changed. All because of one technology, you are able to hear much more than you were expecting to hear. This whole situation is based on my life, and you are going to learn how much a CI have impacted me. A CI is a cochlear implant, and it is a device that is worn by a deaf person, and it sends neural transmitters to the cochlea, and it helps them hear greatly. There are some factors that have greatly developed me using my

Our outer ear is made up of the three tiny bones, the cochlea filled with fluid, and our tiny hair receptors that pick up sounds. Once a person is going deaf or is deaf, that means that hair cells are damaged and they can no longer send sound information to our hearing nerves. The implant “does not amplify sound. It bypasses the missing or damaged hair cells altogether, and delivers more sound information directly to the hearing nerve. The cochlear implant has two parts: 1) the implant, which is surgically placed into the Mastoid bone, and 2) the outer device of a headpiece and processor,” (Bhansali. 2001. Paragraph 7, Lines