Third Time is a Charm! ASU Research Study

Hello family and friends,

I have not reported on my blog for quite some time, but I thought it would be interesting to share some information of my recent experience at Arizona State University. This was my third time at ASU to participate in a research study for cochlear implants. I have always been passionate about research, especially with cochlear implants to hopefully provide information for improving CI's in the future. It's also has been really nice to visit with my one of my favorite cousins, Christa each time I visit.

The current study I participated was able to give me a good indicator of how well I am performing with two implants and to learn about how well I hear with my most recent implant on the left side. I have noticed that I continue to place myself with everyone on my right side, which has been my dominate side for the past six years. I was a little apprehensive to see what my results would be on the left side, but I am very pleased to learn that I am truly maximizing both of my implants and performing quite well. Throughout the study, the researcher was constantly amazed of how high I scored compared to the other participants. He told me that I had excellent surgeries and mapping at Mayo Clinic. 

I found this information to be very promising, but then I felt like I might be completely skewing the whole study with my high scores. I talked with my Dad and he reassured me by stating that I am demonstrating the possible potential of cochlear implants. I feel I am very lucky to be very successful with both of my devices. I feel this is due to wearing hearing aids for most of my life and using every possible residual hearing I had, when the same type of hearing loss for someone else may not have been successful.

The study I participated in was unique that it focused on my lip reading skills. Honestly, I have felt like my lip reading has completely went to the wayside ever since I received the first implant. I notice I do not lipread when I am in a quiet environment and mostly rely on auditory. If there is a lot of background noise, my lipreading goes into full blown mode and it still can be a struggle to hear.

I was curious to see what my scores would show. My older brother, Scotty and childhood friend, Jessalyn are the best lip-readers I know! They do extremely well in all situations and it blows me away. Many research articles continue to state that only 30% can be read on the lips. Anyways, the specific description of the study is pasted here:

It investigates how you integrate cues such as visual cues into speech understanding. The outcome will be some knowledge about your lip-reading skill, your ability to pick up different sources of information, as well as basic speech understanding scores (i.e., words or sentences) of your both devices.

Here are my results. I was able to comprehend 95% of sentences that were presented to me in noise with both of my devices on, then for a single device I scored 85% in noise for each ear. When tested with each ear in quiet, I scored between 90 to 100. My right ear is slight better which is understandable since I've only had my left ear implanted for a year and still have many mappings to go for fine tuning. WOW! I am very surprised about these scores!

When I did my first test with the left ear only, I noticed for the first time I was not hearing mostly low sounds, but I was able to hear the high sounds as well and it sounded more normal than when I was  initially hooked up and everything sounded like Darth Vader! It was kind of spooky!

During my first lip-reading test, I was informed that my skills are very strong. I scored with 40% lip-reading sentences without voice, the average for all of the participants was 8%. So, I guess I still have some skills. Then, I scored 60% of the sentences in noise. For another test, I scored 40% without any visuals (no lipreading) to 98% with visuals with an easy lip reading task in noise.

My last assessment was a consonant test of short chunks of three to four letters with short a sounds: aba, ada, afa, aga, aja, aka, ala, ama, ana, apa, asa, asha, ata, atha, ava, and aza. I scored 92% in noise with visuals and 64% with no visuals. Then an average of 54% for each ear without visuals. I guess the average is 30% for cochlear implant users. For the subtest, I had to read lips only with no speech sound in noise and I scored 52% on the consonant test. Crazy!

So, I guess I can walk away from this study knowing that both of my cochlear implants are both performing very similar and I just have a habit of placing people on my right side. Also, my lip reading skills are not as bad as I thought and they help me tremendously in noise. I am happy I got my second implant because I know my scores were not this high with my hearing aid. I continue to feel very fortunate that it has been successful for me. Thanks for your support!