Talk:Deafness

Myths

"7.All deaf/hard of hearing people want to be “cured” and able to hear" Unless there's a citation I don't think this is appropriate to put as it's fact for 99% of the people with hearing impairment. It's like saying "All people with Cancer want to be “cured” and able to be cancerfree". Pretty sure it's not really a myth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yialanliu (talk • contribs) 20:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Holy POV, Batman!

In children, hearing loss can lead to social isolation for several reasons. First, the child experiences delayed social development that is in large part tied to delayed language acquisition. It is also directly tied to their inability to pick up auditory social cues. This can result in a deaf person becoming generally irritable. A child who uses sign language, or identifies with the deaf sub-culture does not generally experience this isolation, particularly if he/she attends a school for the deaf, but may conversely experience isolation from his parents if they do not know sign language. A child who is exclusively or predominantly oral (using speech for communication) can experience social isolation from his or her hearing peers, particularly if no one takes the time to explicitly teach her social skills that other children acquire independently by virtue of having normal hearing. Finally, a child who has a severe impairment and uses some sign language may be rejected by his or her deaf peers, because of an understandable hesitation in abandoning the use of existent verbal and speech-reading skills. Some in the deaf community can view this as a rejection of their own culture and its mores, and therefore will reject the individual preemptively.

Regarding the first bolded section, I'm a bit confused... if it's pre-lingual hearing loss, why would the child have "delayed language acquisition"? Signed language users go through the same stages of Language acquisition that oral language users go through. If it's truly post-lingual hearing loss, I could see how there would be a delay in acquisition of a signed language. But pre-lingual hearing loss? I don't see a difference.

As for the second paragraph, I see some NPOV issues with the word "understandable". And again, since this is a pre-lingual person we're talking about, there are no "existent verbal and speech-reading skills." This paragraph seems to either have been written by someone with a strong Oralist bent, or someone who got confused about the "pre-lingual" part.134.71.140.147 (talk) 23:47, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

This page on PBS.org has a bit of info about language development and deafness (see the last section at the bottom of the page). It doesn't address issues of social development, though. I'll bet there's a ton of academic research on this topic if someone has the energy to look for it. Augurar (talk) 01:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Deafness article

Please join in the discussion at this location. Photouploaded (talk) 16:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for assistance merging content

The first half of the Deafness article was essentially a poor version of the hearing impairment article. There was a great deal of duplication between the two. In an attempt to fix this problem, I have moved this first half of the Deafness article to the hearing impairment namespace, under Talk:Hearing impairment/Deafness. Please compare this content with that of hearing impairment. I would appreciate feedback concerning how best to merge in this content. Photouploaded (talk) 16:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

In the case of orphaned duplicated content like that, just replace it by a summary and a main-article link. Dicklyon (talk) 18:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

There isn't any article to link to. The Deafness article is gone. Photouploaded (talk) 14:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

What happened to the old article? I spent a lot of time working on it, and my entries seem to not have been transferred to hearing impairment article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.172.28.73 (talk) 15:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What's the name of the condition where your ears spontaneously feel as though they have been "plugged" and you cannot do anything but wait until it wears off by itself? (Dominant when entering high altitudes by airplanes or in tunnels by car) 13:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)White Mage Cid Hi how are you people!!!!11 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.176.136.240 (talk) 21:09, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This Article is pretty Audist

Not trying to be negative here. But I don't know anyone with any level of Hearing loss who considers themselves H.I. Even Doctors are generally sensitive enough to use "Hard of Hearing". The phrase itself is negative. Couldn't it just say deaf? Also, the section on Social Impact is very Biased. It explains that Deafness=Isolation. That can be true, but only if the family is unwilling to adapt to their child's needs. It doesn't HAVE to be that way. Isolation isn't the result of Deafness, but rather the result of families unwilling to see another way to live. I'm not an expert. Just some observations. Suggestion: Maybe could do away with the 1st 4 sentences of the Social Impact section. Also this Section: " Finally, a child who has a severe impairment and uses some sign language may be rejected by his or her deaf peers, because of an understandable hesitation in abandoning the use of existent verbal and speech-reading skills. Some in the deaf community can view this as a rejection of their own culture and its mores, and therefore will reject the individual preemptively. Seems odd. Culturally Deaf people reject someone for Signing? Is there a reference for this ever happening? 72.11.90.168 (talk) 22:52, 19 July 2008 (UTC)ST

I agree that Deafness should not be referred to as "hearing impairment." This is a negative term, and many Deaf people dislike the use of this term. This article could be improved by using the term "Deaf" instead of H.I. ASLchica13 (talk) 14:39, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree, This Hearing impairment should be removed. Intead of it, put Deaf on topic.

Please don't redirect "DEAF" to hearing impairment. The word, "Deaf" has different meaning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.233.105.180 (talk) 06:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

It probably would be useful to take previous extensive discussion of th the name/redirection issue into consideration: Talk:Deaf/Archive_1, Talk:Hearing_impairment/Archive_2, Talk:Deaf, Talk:Deaf/Talk:Deafness --Kvng (talk) 14:11, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Problem, there's no consensus that can be drawn from these talk page links, I read these comments; the consensus was that there should be a merger, which makes sense as "hearing impairment" is a word for deafness. These are two very different things and they're not terribly subtle; the term hearing impairment has connotations that are generally avoided even by the medical profession, which is rarely at the forefront of activism as a group, so why should this term be used when deafness is the more frequently accepted medical term - notwithstanding the idea that different degrees of deafness as sliced up by social categories of people, not by any scientific measure. Snapdragonfly (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I see extensive discussion of the merger, but not of the naming. Does anyone actually support the current name for any reason other than avoiding the hassle of change? I see only the opposite so far. Dfeuer (talk) 13:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Temporary hearing loss

So some experts recently on NPR described a long-known mechanism by which hearing is temporarily reduced in sensitivity to prevent damage in the presence of loud sounds.New Research Towards Hearing Loss Pill This mechanism should be described in the article, along with a description of what damage can occur in these situations. Apparently recent research is focused on the genetics of this mechanism, with the potential for a treatment which would mimic the effects. -- Beland (talk) 08:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you're referring to Threshold shift it is mentioned in the Olivocochlear article --Kvng (talk) 13:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

"Deafness" was moved to "Hearing impairment"

The original article "Deafness" was moved to the present article "Hearing impairment" on 18 Jan 2008. What is the point of changing all the occurrences of "Hearing impairment" or "hearing impaired" in the article back to "deafness" or "deaf". The move was agreed to after an extensive vote on this issue in the discussion page. Do the people are trying to reintroduce the original terms never bother to go back to the history of an article when they edit? Dieter Simon (talk) 01:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it wasn't a move; Deafness merged, partly into Hearing impairment and partly into Deaf culture. I think this was a sensible resolution. Dicklyon (talk) 07:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

As I noted elsewhere on this page, I do not see any justification in discussion for the current choice of title, and it seems rather odd to choose a title many deaf find offensive. 71.178.171.15 (talk) 07:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Deaf people find it offensive that an encyclopedia has an article on hearing impairment? How odd. What about non-deaf people with hearing impairment? And what about the thousands of books that use this term? Are they offended by those, too? Isn't this really orthogonal to what you call deaf people, or to the whole Deaf culture thing? The reason you "do not see any justification in discussion for the current choice of title" is probably that the question has never come up since the article was started under the current title in 2002. Dicklyon (talk) 08:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the term "Hearing Impaired/Impairement" is seen as hearing-centric in the Deaf community, implying that the deaf individuals are hindered by their Deafness, where as they can do anything a hearing individual can. It's almost akin to the N-word. The N-word was originally another name for the color black, and still is accepted in some languages and parts of the world. It is, however, extremely offensive when used in reference towards Black individuals. Imagine if Wikipedia's article on Black's and African American culture was moved under the current article on the N-word. You'd get approximately the same effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.88.35.94 (talk) 15:40, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

My section above in this latest discussion was incorrect. Having had more time to look back at the history of this discussion I had better clarify the progress of what went on:

No, as you correctly stated the article "Hearing impairment" was never moved from "Deafness" or anything like it, but equally it was never true that the discussion about "deafness" never came up. At the beginning of 2005 there was an NPOV Dispute about disambiguation suggestions which certainly discussed the suggestion of whether to include a reference to deafness.

Then on 22 March 2005 a separate talk section was created named in this Talk page "Merging "Deaf" page with "Hearing impairment".

Then further actual articles were created: "Post-lingual hearing impairment" seemed to have been redirected/moved to Post-lingual deafness and "Hearing loss" to "Hearing impairment".

Furthermore there is an article Unilateral hearing loss and one Hearing loss with craniofacial syndromes.

So "hearing loss" in one way or another certainly has been discussed in the past, but I leave you to look back on these various talk:sections or separate articles to create your own impressions of the various suggestions that were made about deafness at one time or another and possibly why the article "Hearing impairment" was never moved to "Hearing loss". Dieter Simon (talk) 23:38, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Defining hearing loss/deafness

I've just altered the definition in the opening paragraph of the article. It previously read:

A hearing impairment or deafness is a full or partial decrease in the ability to detect or understand sounds.[1] Caused by a wide range of biological and environmental factors, loss of hearing can happen to any organism that perceives sound. The term Hearing impaired is often used to refer to those who are deaf, although it is viewed negatively by members of Deaf culture, who prefer the terms Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Sound waves vary in amplitude and frequency. Amplitude is the sound wave's peak pressure variation. Frequency is the number of cycles per second of a sinusoidal component of a sound wave. Loss of the ability to detect some frequencies, or to detect low-amplitude sounds that an organism naturally detects, is a hearing impairment.

These are the main problems I've addressed:

1. 'decrease in ability' - a person born totally deaf needn't have previously had more hearing for it to be an impairment (i.e., no 'decrease' in ability need occur). What is needed is a comparison relative to a species norm, so the inability to perceive sound that other people can is an impairment, but the inability to hear sound that is out of the frequency range of normal auditory perception is not an impairment.

2. 'understand sounds' may mislead readers into thinking that this is about communication rather than auditory processing generally.

3. 'sounds' should be 'sound'.

4. Detail about the terminology of amplitude and frequency seem out of place in the lede and the substance of this is covered by noting in the new definition that hearing impairments can be frequency-specific.

--Distinguisher (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Removed history section

I removed this section, which appears to be excerpted from a poor quality student essay on the subject. It contained numerous references to 'our country', which are out of place on an international website, touched on issues that have been more adequately covered in other sections of the article, and contained this gem of misinformation: one may be asking themselves how hearing impairments came about. It was believed that a group of people from oversees (sic) landed on Martha’s Vineyard in Connecticut during the 17th century, and started a deaf colony. So deaf people in 'our country' are all descendants of a particular group of settlers in Martha's Vineyard... I removed it.--Distinguisher (talk) 09:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Standard Threshold Shift

Can someone add info on "Standard Threshold Shift" to this article? Mention of it was just added to the disambig page STS ...

• Standard Threshold Shift, a change in hearing threshold relative to the baseline audiogram of an average of 10 dB or more at 2000, 3000, and 4000 Hz in either ear.

... and I'm looking for somewhere to link that to. This seems to be the most appropriate article, but the phrase isn't used here yet. The only article that phrase is currently used in, is Exposure action value. Thanks for any assistance or advice. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Opening paragraph

I question the relevance of the second line in the first paragraph of this article. "Use of the term impaired implies that deafness presents an inherent disadvantage to an animal, a view that is rejected within the Deaf culture movement[citation needed], where the terms Deaf and hard of hearing are preferred.". It could be argued that the Deaf culture movement primarily deals with humans and not other animals. This also seems like an opinion without evidence to support the claim. Perhaps this could be moved to the Deaf Culture article or removed. What are people's thoughts? Russell Dent (talk) 14:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I made a small change to this section, which I think improves the situation. I do think it is important to mention the hostility that exists within the Deaf culture movement to the term impaired because there is a history of edit disputes about which terms should be used. Note that the current wording doesn't assert that impaired is inaccurate, but simply that they believe it to be so (see Deaf Culture for refs).--Distinguisher (talk) 19:31, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Your edit has made the line clearer, thank you. I wasn't questioning the accuracy of that line, I'm very aware of the views of the Deaf Culture movement and I'm thankful that you mentioned the history of edit disputes because I'm relatively new to Wikipedia. What I was implying was, that on it's own, without a reference, the line looked like an opinon. However I still wonder if it's relevant to have that line in this article considering this article is about Hearing Impairment. I note that the Deaf Culture article doesn't mention the word impairment once. I'd also like to mention that I'm deaf hence my interest in this article but I have no issues with the word impairment because it's almost universally accepted and I believe Wikipedia articles should aim for universal terminology.Russell Dent (talk) 03:22, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings on this particular issue. I have a deep appreciation of Deaf culture and its members' perspectives on words that are used in relation to deafness (such as "deaf-mute", a terribly outdated term that is still used too often). But from a standpoint of a quality article, if this were any other topic I'd be insisting that the comments do not belong in the lead, and that it especially should not be there if it is not discussed elsewhere in the article. Wherever it goes in the article, the statement about the feelings of Deaf culture needs a source. I think the ideal way to handle this would be to have a sourced discussion of terminology in Deaf culture, and a brief mention somewhere in this article, with a link to the section in the Deaf culture article. If I had more time, I'd tackle that myself. Cresix (talk) 03:36, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I just revived and cleaned up a previously deleted section on terminology in the Deaf culture article if you would like to add to that.--Distinguisher (talk) 08:55, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Unreliable sources?

I've added a few tags to the "Myths" section for some sketchy claims; first, that only "30% of spoken English is visible on the lips" (as a linguistics student, I can tell you that certain elements such as voicing, intonation, stress, etc. are indeed indistinguishable, but I doubt that can be quantifiable) and that 90% of deaf children have hearing parent. The sources for these myths (as well as most of the others) is a quiz from the "Communications Services for the Deaf of Minnesota," with no data (i.e. census information, for the latter) to back it up. If none can be found, I suggest the "myths" be deleted.
Additionally, much of this list is just copypasta of the aforementioned quiz mixed with a tutorworkshop.org page (again, of questionable reliability.)
Links to the above articles:
http://www.mcbw.org/files/u1/deafculture.pdf
http://www.tutorworkshop.org/deaf/deaf4.htm

'Sufferer'

Oh boy....When I go visit 'Deaf' page, and read 'sufferer' in the first sentence, you're actually insulting the handicapped community in general, who usually in fact are proud of the fact that they overcome their disability or better, grew into the disability such that it is 'natural'.

Problem is this.... 'Deaf' got merged into 'hearing impaired.' In fact, 'Deaf' is the new term which is not related to Deafness nor Hearing-impairness (nor Deaf Culture) (of which Wikipedia redirected me to.)

Since I most definitely do not equate 'Deaf' with a Sufferer? Come on, there is a better term than 'sufferer'. The problem is, the article merger did a 'smash-up' when there should be 3 different pages. I should not have to site site anything to refute this, as this is common sense is for an article not to adopt a cripple POV (not to mention insulting.) Egberts (talk) 02:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I removed the word. Cresix (talk) 02:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, also of the 3 models (culture, medical and social); the 'Deaf' page should be restored and used for social, the 'Deaf culture' stands, and the 'hearing-impaired' is strictly about medical. those are the general conventions we've been heading over the last few decades. But the #REDIRECT Hearing impairment on 'Deaf' page is still deprecating a social into a medical condition, which is no good... maybe that's another thread?Egberts (talk) 02:57, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Sneezing Causes Hearing Loss?

"People with allergies have a higher chance of increased hearing loss. Hearing loss can be caused by the sudden change in air pressure behind the eardrum in the Eustachian Tube during a sneeze. Though the amount of hearing loss seems negligible, roughly .0001% loss per sneeze dependent upon the strength and frequency of the sneeze(s), their effects are cumulative. Allergy sufferers typically have on average 1-3% more hearing loss than those without allergies, due to their above average number of sneezes."

It's a hard to believe claim, the numbers are a bit funky, and there's no citation. It was added by an unregistered member by the name of "Curchey-d" on July 7th, 2009. He has only two contributions to wikimedia. I cannot find any journal article that corroborates the information. Not that I can find any reason not to believe it — it makes some sense — but unless somebody can provide a citation I think it should be removed from the article for the purposes of intellectual honesty and accuracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.139.176.84 (talk) 23:31, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The purpose of this article

This article seems to be suffering from constant erosion. There was a time when it was reasonably well written, but it needs some attention to get it back in shape. As for its purpose, I think it's worth stressing that this article is likely to be consulted by people who are wanting to learn about technical explanations of what deafness is, how it's quantified, what causes it and how it's treated or accommodated. While I appreciate that there are also interesting things to say about the culture that has grown up around deafness in humans, the article for that is Deaf Culture.--Distinguisher (talk) 07:51, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism?

There was a case of extensive removal of content on in December last year - [1]. I don't see any clear explanation for this removal. Is this a case of vandalism? Mikael Häggström (talk) 15:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

No, I would guess the edits were well intentioned, but they do seem to be inappropriate. Unfortunately, the article has changed significantly in the interim. Powers ^T 16:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, it doesn't seem appropriate to simply revert to how it was before that edit. Still, if there's no objection to it, I will at least reinsert those entire sections that were deleted. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't object. Especially since there was a large volume of removal from the "causes" section--it used to be a lot more comprehensive. I just came here looking for something I knew to be in that section, and the particular subsection (Genetic) I was looking for is completely absent. - Purplewowies (talk) 05:38, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Please undo these deletions. Deleting complete, even properly sourced, sections of an article without explanation, let alone discussion, is never appropriate and should be treated as vandalism, however good the intention – we can't guess at what people refuse to tell us. Why exactly should presbycusis or other causes of hearing loss not be treated here?

Additionally, I would be thankful if someone more knowledgeable could go over this edit, which seemed in good faith, but reversed the message of the text, and as such needs a source (and in addition, should be phrased less informally) – I felt it was better to undo it for now. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I just made a reinsertion of deleted text in that edit. There were some sections (pasted below) that I haven't included in the current version, however, as I think they need some discussion or editing before any resinsertion. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. A comparison of the current state with the state previous to the deletions reveals that all external links and categories (save one) are still missing. Shouldn't they be restored, too? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing those missing parts I've reinserted the categories, but I'll leave the external links to someone who's interested in such a list, because, to be honest, I'm not. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Sections requiring some discussion before reinsertion

Environmental situations

Deafness can be caused by environmental situations such as noise, trauma, or other [[Ear#Damage to the human ear|ear defects]]. Dangerous Decibels, a group that is attempting to help reduce deafness, states that anything over 85 [[decibels]], which is about the level of a busy city, will damage hearing.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/ |title=Dangerous Decibels |publisher=Dangerous Decibels |date= |accessdate=2012-01-10}}</ref> Listening to loud noises for long periods of time make the eardrum less sensitive, which in turn makes it difficult to pick up quiet sounds more difficult to hear. Going through a trauma, like a car accident, can cause hearing loss due to the noise of the incident or an injury to the ear. If the [[middle ear]] or [[inner ear]] is damaged during the accident then hearing will degenerate because the sound wave cannot make it to the brain to be interpreted into sound. Other environmental factors that can cause deafness are nasal allergies. Nasal allergies cause mucus to build up in the throat and the nose, which will block the [[eustachian tubes]] and make it difficult for sound waves to make it into the inner ear.

I think the current version already has a section on this topic that is more detailed, but if anyone has time, feel free to find parts in here that are not present in the article. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Treatments

The most common conductive hearing loss treatment is a type of surgical procedure that will remove a blockage in the outer ear. This is almost always effective and will treat conductive hearing loss however surgery is only possible if the cause of the hearing loss can be identified. If not, a hearing aid can be used to amplify sound to make it clearer and more defined. The newest treatment for ANSD and sensorineural hearing loss is a cochlear implant. The cochlear implant is surgically installed to connect to the auditory nerve. The implant has a membrane that vibrates when sound hits it and sends signals to the nerve which then transmits the stimulus to the brain. The cochlear implant has only one membrane compared to the human ear’s three membranes. This means that sound will not be as clear using the cochlear when juxtaposed to normal hearing, but sounds can still be identified and responses can be made. In prelingually deaf children, cochlear implants as a rule allow the acquisition of mother tongue if implanted early in life and no other medical condition impairs the outcome <ref>Kral A, O'Donoghue GM. Profound Deafness in Childhood. New England J Medicine 2010: 363; 1438-50 </ref>.

I think this section was added after the removal by other users to fill the void, but it still seems less detailed than the version in the article. Again, I welcome everyone to have a look to find anything that may be useful to insert in the article. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)