The Sense of Hearing

Every now and then, I tell my wife how fortunate (or blessed?) I am to be able to reap the enormous benefits of having cochlear implants. At the end of the day, there is no encroaching exhaustion from speechreading—albeit I may be depleted for other reasons. Nevertheless, despite being bone tired, I am overcome by an exhilarating feeling almost every time I push the key into the door lock to enter the house. I simply exclaim, "Wow, I can really hear well now!" Hearing is, indeed, a joy.

Most mornings, when my wife and I settle down for our coffee and chat, I throw out the notion that my cochlear implants may have staved off any level of the debilitating depression that can emerge with advancing age—at least for some people. I mention that I feel more alert or alive than I did during the period when I wore hearing aids. This level of alertness or aliveness seems therapeutic—it may also have hidden benefits. Even my hearing aids of yesteryear could not compete with the power of my current implants. No doubt the implants are ten thousand times better than hearing aids—at least for me.

Sometimes I think it is possible to underestimate the contributions of hearing (or audition) to the development of language (spoken), and of literacy based on that language. Actually, it might be that the benefits of hearing for through-the-air language development diminish with the acquisition of reading and writing skills. Blamey (2003) asserted,

It is obvious that hearing has a direct influence on the receptive and sensory components of spoken language processing and on the learning of the phonology (the sounds) of the language. … Hearing may have less influence on spoken language learning after the child has begun to read and write.

(p. 233)

From another perspective, we should not overestimate the interrelations among hearing, language, and literacy. An individual does not need to hear in order to acquire/learn or use a spoken language—that is, to perceive and express a message—which might be accomplished via other means such as speechreading, auditory learning, or visual phonics (e.g., see the discussion in Wang, Trezek, Luckner, & Paul, 2008). And the ability to hear is not really necessary for learning literacy skills—facilitative, yes, but not absolutely necessary—and not even sufficient.

Possessing a certain level of proficiency in the through-the-air form of a language is also necessary, but not sufficient, for reading and writing in that language. There is considerable ongoing debate on the strength of the relationship between degree of hearing acuity and the ability not only to receive and express speech sounds accurately but on whether this relationship is even essential to acquiring spoken and written forms of a language. Digging deeper, the real issue might be the role of a sound phonology in acquiring a spoken language or even its written representation (e.g., see the various articles in Wang & Andrews, 2014, 2015).

Thus far, the above discussion does not convey earthshaking news. It might be more exciting to understand completely how d/Deaf and hard of hearing individuals learn a spoken language and its written counterpart without functional hearing skills. This is certainly a worthwhile research thrust, but I happen to agree with Plack (2005) that the sense of hearing should be studied as much as the sense of seeing (vision). With the advent of advanced listening devices, we have improved our understanding of the contributions of hearing. Of course, there is much more to bring to light about the sense of hearing, especially for increasing the efficacy of our current listening devices or developing better ones. Plack concluded his book, The Sense of Hearing, with the following passage:

The good news is that progress is being made, and as the reference section [in Plack's book] demonstrates, many important discoveries have been made in the last few years. As we uncover the ear's remaining secrets, I like to think that there will be a few surprises in store.

(p. 239)

Setting aside the potential benefits of hearing for spoken-language...