29 Year Old Hears Herself for the First Time?

 

There has recently been a whole bunch of hoo-ha on the internet regarding a YouTube video of a congenitally deaf 29 year woman named Sarah Churman having her implantable hearing device switched on for the first time. The video quickly went viral and has received nearly 7.4 million views at last count. The overwhelming majority of the feedback was positive, however there were a few niggling doubters calling fake because Sarah was able to speak so well and understand the audiologist even when she had her eyes covered. 

Apparently everyone’s an expert! Let’s assess how plausible these claims really are shall we?

 
First, it is necessary to define what “deafness” is. There is no cut-off point in hearing sensitivity where a person is considered to be “deaf” per se. When referring to an individual’s level of hearing impairment, audiologists use terminology such as mild, moderate, severe, profound, and total. The use of percentages to describe levels of hearing impairment is misleading as it fails to account for the range of hearing sensitivity across frequencies, but that’s an aside. Deafness is an ambiguous term that refers more accurately to an individual’s level of perceived impairment, or identity with Deaf culture. A deaf individual typically has hearing threshold levels ranging from severe to total hearing loss.

It is important to note that there is a lot of variation in how hearing impaired individuals are able to cope and compensate for their impairment. Two individuals with exactly the same levels of hearing sensitivity may produce very different outcomes. Strategies such as lip reading, the use of contextual cues, repair strategies (e.g. informing others that they have a hearing impairment, asking a person to repeat themselves or speak more clearly), and manipulating the environment (e.g. sitting outside rather than inside a noisy restaurant) all enable an individual to compensate for their hearing loss and improve their speech intelligibility. In addition, even individuals with highly impaired hearing are quite capable of understanding speech in a quiet environment free of background noise. It should be noted that in the video, we can see that Sarah is in a sound-treated room, which is designed to minimise ambient noise such that she is in an optimal hearing environment.

Since posting the video, Sarah has provided some clarification, stating:

“I was born deaf and have worn hearing aids from the age of 2, but hearing aids only help so much. I have gotten by this long in life by reading lips… My whole life I’ve been complimented on how well I speak. I don’t really have an answer for you other than I have always had a passion for reading, grammar, and English. My hearing loss was/is considered severe to profound. I’ve worked very hard to be able to interact and blend in…”

Following the growing popularity of the youtube video, she has also appeared on the Today show and Ellen, providing more clarification:

“I get asked that all the time. Honestly I just accredit it to Deaf-ed school, speech therapy, and I’m a big talker, I just like to talk a lot.”

So we now know that Sarah’s hearing impairment is severe to profound rather than total, meaning that she is capable of hearing some sounds 70 dB or louder, that she has used hearing aids to maximise her residual hearing levels for most of her life, that she attended some form of targeted deaf education, and that she received speech therapy. While YouTube commenters have claimed that Sarah’s speech is indistinguishable from that of a hearing person’s, in the original video, we only received a very small sample of her speech skills. In the Today and Ellen clips, while it is clear that while Sarah has excellent articulation for a person with a prelingual severe to profound hearing impairment, it is also evident that she does have a noticeable speech impediment. So is it plausible that someone with even severe to profound hearing levels to develop good speech?

While we have no specific information in the type of approach taken by the Deaf-ed school that Sarah attended, there are a range of approaches to targeted Deaf education that have produced successful outcomes for spoken speech. For example, research has shown that oral programs that employ the combined use of auditory and visual cues (although not sign language) in addition to the use of hearing aids or cochlear implants to promote speech intelligibility and articulation amongst children with profound hearing impairments (that cannot hear sounds softer than 90 dB) are often successful at achieving speech competency levels comparable to same-aged hearing peers (Greers & Moog, 1989; Rhoades &Chisolm, 2000). While individuals born with Sarah's level of hearing loss typically exhibit a noticable speech impediment, it is possible, although not typical for some individuals to develop very clear, articulate speech such as Sarah has. This is down to appropriate early intervention and individual variation.

By the way, the implant Sarah received is a new type of fully implantable device called the Esteem, produced by Envoy Medical. It is not a cochlear implant, rather it is a device that uses a sound processor to transmit electrical impulses derived from the movements of the ear drum to stimulate the mechanical movement of the stapes bone in the middle ear, allowing for the amplification of the kinetic signal to the cochlea, the level of which is tailored to the individual’s level of hearing impairment. Please refer to their website for more information.

So in short, is it possible for a deaf individual to be able to understand highly contextualised speech with closed eyes closed in a sound treated room? Absolutely. Is it possible for an individual with a congenital severe to profound hearing impairment to develop good speech articulation with appropriate, early intervention? Yes. Should Sarah have titled her video “29 years old and hearing my voice amplified by my new implanted device for the 1st time!” instead of “29 years old and hearing myself for the 1st time!” to clear up any confusion? Perhaps. But she can’t be blamed for not anticipating accusations of fakery when sharing an intimate and important moment of her life on the interwebs. So let's all instead focus on the positive side of Sarah's experience and the awesome power of science to help people to hear!