The Cochlear Implant as an Epistemic Thing

2021 ◽  
pp. 565-581
Author(s):  
Markus Spöhrer
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Technical Stability ◽  
Technical Object ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Fact

This chapter examines the translations and (de)stabilizations of the cochlear implant, a subcutaneous prosthesis that is subject to ethical and judicial controversies. By looking at medical, social, and scientific contexts, the CI will be described as a technical object ascribed with certain attributes providing technical stability in those contexts that treat it and practice it as a scientific fact, a “technical thing.” Scientific communities stabilize technical things by rigorously excluding attributes of the “social.” However, the CI is designed to enable participation, to “gap” the supposed “disability” of not being able to hear, attributing a certain instability to it. The chapter will theoretically and methodologically approach such processes of (de)stabilization and transformation by making use of ANT and Hans-Jörg Rheinbergers concept of technical and epistemic things. This will be illustrated by analyzing certain discourses used as illustrations for the successful communication between implanted children and their parents in practical guides for parents with deaf children.

The Cochlear Implant as an Epistemic Thing

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-217
Author(s):  
Markus Spöhrer
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Technical Stability ◽  
Technical Object ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Fact

This chapter examines the translations and (de)stabilizations of the cochlear implant, a subcutaneous prosthesis that is subject to ethical and judicial controversies. By looking at medical, social, and scientific contexts, the CI will be described as a technical object ascribed with certain attributes providing technical stability in those contexts that treat it and practice it as a scientific fact, a “technical thing.” Scientific communities stabilize technical things by rigorously excluding attributes of the “social.” However, the CI is designed to enable participation, to “gap” the supposed “disability” of not being able to hear, attributing a certain instability to it. The chapter will theoretically and methodologically approach such processes of (de)stabilization and transformation by making use of ANT and Hans-Jörg Rheinbergers concept of technical and epistemic things. This will be illustrated by analyzing certain discourses used as illustrations for the successful communication between implanted children and their parents in practical guides for parents with deaf children.

The (Re-)Socialization of Technical Objects in Patient Networks

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Spöhrer
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
Technical Object ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Attachments

In this paper an effort is made to describe the processes of technical stabilization of the epistemic thing cochlear implant in certain stabilized scientific environments and the way in which such stabilizations are fortified, discoursified and medially produced. Such technical stabilizations can only be accomplished by rigorously excluding attributes of the social. However, the cochlear implant is born out of the need to enable participation in “normal” social life and is thus a thoroughly social actor attributed with certain social attachments. With the translation into patient networks, the technical object cochlear implant is re-inscribed with attributes of the social and is thus subject to destabilization, remediatization and re-socialization again. Being transferred from the stabilized context of biological and medical science, the discourses of the cochlear implant are accumulated with elements of ethical or judicial discourses in which social issues are in the foreground. This will be illustrated by analyzing certain scientific viscourses and images which are used as illustrations for the successful communication between implanted children and their parents in practical guides for parents with deaf children.

Use of the Telephone in Prelingually Deaf Children With a Multichannel Cochlear Implant

2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Tait ◽  
Thomas P. Nikolopoulos ◽  
Sue Archbold ◽  
Gerard M. O'Donoghue
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Prelingually Deaf

scholarly journals Rapid learning of minimally different words in five- to six-year-old children: effects of acoustic salience and hearing impairment

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCEL R. GIEZEN ◽  
PAOLA ESCUDERO ◽  
ANNE E. BAKER
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Hearing Impairment ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Object Matching ◽  
Rapid Learning ◽  
Minimal Pairs

AbstractThis study investigates the role of acoustic salience and hearing impairment in learning phonologically minimal pairs. Picture-matching and object-matching tasks were used to investigate the learning of consonant and vowel minimal pairs in five- to six-year-old deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI), and children of the same age with normal hearing (NH). In both tasks, the CI children showed clear difficulties with learning minimal pairs. The NH children also showed some difficulties, however, particularly in the picture-matching task. Vowel minimal pairs were learned more successfully than consonant minimal pairs, particularly in the object-matching task. These results suggest that the ability to encode phonetic detail in novel words is not fully developed at age six and is affected by task demands and acoustic salience. CI children experience persistent difficulties with accurately mapping sound contrasts to novel meanings, but seem to benefit from the relative acoustic salience of vowel sounds.

scholarly journals Emotion Understanding in Deaf Children with a Cochlear Implant

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Wiefferink ◽  
C. Rieffe ◽  
L. Ketelaar ◽  
L. De Raeve ◽  
J. H. M. Frijns
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Emotion Understanding ◽  
Deaf Children

scholarly journals Cochlear implantation: a review of the literature and the Nijmegen results

1997 ◽  
Vol 111 (11) ◽  
pp. 1008-1017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Jamal A. Makhdoum ◽  
Ad F. M. Snik ◽  
Paul van den Broek
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Hearing Aids ◽  
Cochlear Implantation ◽  
Sensorineural Deafness ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Subject Selection ◽  
Profound Deafness ◽  
Deaf Adults ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
To Receive

AbstractThe field of cochlear implantation is developing rapidly. In subjects with bilateral profound deafness who gain no benefit from conventional hearing aids the aim of cochlear implantation is to provide a means for them to receive auditory sensations. Throughout the world, most cochlear implant centres are still continuing their research efforts to improve the results with this technique. Although it is still difficult to predict how an individual will perform with a cochlear implant, the success of cochlear implantation can no longer be denied. In this paper, we review some recent papers and reports, and the results of the various Nijmegen cochlear implant studies. Data about subject selection, examinations, surgery and the outcome are discussed. Our results were in good agreement with those of other authors. It can be concluded once again that cochlear implantation is an effective treatment for postlingually deaf adults and children, and for prelingually (congenital or acquired) deaf children with profound bilateral sensorineural deafness.

scholarly journals Modifying and validating the social responsiveness scale edition 2 for use with deaf children and young people

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0243162
Author(s):  
Barry Wright ◽  
Helen Phillips ◽  
Ann Le Couteur ◽  
Jennifer Sweetman ◽  
Rachel Hodkinson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Intraclass Correlation ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Social Responsiveness Scale ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Social Responsiveness ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Delphi Consensus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Test Retest Reliability

A Delphi consensus methodology was used to adapt a screening tool, the Social Responsiveness Scale– 2 (SRS-2), for use with deaf children including those whose preferred communication method is sign language. Using this approach; 27 international experts (The Delphi International Expert Panel), on the topic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in deaf people, contributed to the review of item content. A criterion for agreement was set at 80% of experts on each item (with 75% acceptable in the final fourth round). The agreed modifications are discussed. The modified SRS-2 research adaptation for deaf people (referred to here as the “SRS-2 Deaf adaptation”) was then translated into British Sign Language using a robust translation methodology and validated in England in a sample of 198 deaf children, 76 with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and 122 without ASD. The SRS-2 Deaf adaptation was compared blind to a NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guideline standard clinical assessment. The area under the Receiver Operating (ROC) curve was 0.811 (95% CI: 0.753, 0.869), with an optimal cut-off value of 73, which gave a sensitivity of 82% and a specificity of 67%. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient was 0.968 suggesting high internal consistency. The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient was 0.897, supporting test-retest reliability. This performance is equivalent to similar instruments used for screening ASD in the hearing population.

Social Organization of Science

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Carrier
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Science Section ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organization Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Claims

The social organization of science as a topic of philosophy of science mostly concerns the question of which kinds of social organization are most beneficial to the epistemic aspirations of science. Section 1 addresses the interaction among scientists for improving epistemic qualities of knowledge claims in contrast to the mere accumulation of contributions from several scientists. Section 2 deals with the principles that are supposed to organize this interaction among scientists such that well-tested and well-confirmed knowledge is produced. Section 3 outlines what is supposed to glue scientific communities together and how society at large is assumed to affect the social organization of these communities. Section 4 attends to social epistemology (i.e., to attempts to explore the influence of social roles and characteristics on the system of scientific knowledge and confirmation practices).

Heterarchical social organizations and relational models: Understanding gender biases in psychological science

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Richard Schoenherr ◽  
Raelyne L. Dopko
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Shift ◽  
General Science ◽  
American Psychological ◽  
Relational Models ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Scientific Awards

In the present study, we sought to explain changes in the proportion of men and women working within North American psychological science in terms of a heterarchical social organization defined by norms and conventions of society, the structure of higher-education institutions, as well as scientific communities. Using archival records from psychology within the U.S., we found that the demographic shift from male-dominated to female-dominated reflects an asymptotic relationship that has been established in the last two decades. An examination of three potential indicators of status (PhD department appointments, general science awards, and scientific awards in psychology) did not indicate a similar trend compared to the ascension of women within psychological science. We believe that this reflects a heterarchical structure: disparate criteria were used to assign women’s status in the social networks of academic institutions and scientific research. Moreover, we also claim that the increase in the number of women and “female-associated” topics has resulted in a general change in the status of psychology.

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