I would say two things, from our observations working with children who have implants.
And again, our population is a bit unusual in the sense that they come from deaf families.
So deaf children, born to deaf families, but who have decided to have their children implanted.
Political and social questions aside: there is a small group of families who are in this category.
We work with those children because we're interested in the effects of early sign language exposure, from birth, on English development by a child with cochlear implantation.
Whether it's true that the more the child signs, the less effective they are in spoken language.
And as I said, the data point to the contrary: it seems that they're very successful at spoken language...
...despite the fact that they had early sign language exposure, or perhaps because of the fact that they had early sign language exposure.
For these children, the parents have reported that they take their implants off not just at those times that I mentioned to you...
...but also when they just want to be able to focus on something, and not have the distraction of noise coming at them.
Or if they've had sensory overload and just want to take it off and have some quiet.
We have some very nice clips of children doing this, in the middle of the filming session, taking them off and doing whatever.
The experimenter will ask them: you took your implants off, why did you do that?
And they say: too noisy, or: too much noise.
Even young children have their own threshold for how much... stimulation they feel they can handle at some time.
And to be able to take that off... I don't know exactly what it feels like to have an implant.
We can guess what it sounds like to be hearing the world through implants, and there are all kinds of simulations you can access online of what it might sound like to a child.
But even if they're very effective users, I imagine... it's not very natural. At some point it might just become something that's hard to listen to.
But these children have the option of taking it off, and they do do that, from our observation.
The other important thing to remember is that even if you implant a child and they're a very successful user of that technology, they're still a deaf child.
I think that is something that is hard... that's something that gets overlooked a lot. Especially if they're successful users.
We've posed the children we worked with the interesting question of whether they are deaf or hearing.
And the answers we get from children at the ages of five or six is: well, I'm both, I'm deaf and I'm hearing.
And when you ask: well how can you be both, aren't people just one or the other?
They say: well, you know, I can hear and I can talk, so I'm hearing, but I'm deaf.
And I think it's very important for children to have that comfort level, with the fact that they are deaf. Without that implant they are deaf.
And they go through moments in the day and the night where they are deaf, functionally.
If we can help them develop an identity that makes a place for that, that fits with that...
...I think that that helps you avoid a lot of internal conflict later.
When you grow up and you feel hearing, because you've been told your whole life that you are hearing, and yet there's something about you... you are deaf.
An implant doesn't make you into a hearing person, you'll always be a deaf person.
I work at Gallaudet University, a university that has a large number of deaf students, and a growing number of deaf students with cochlear implants.
A lot of them tell the same story: growing up not being exposed to sign language because they were relatively successful users of their cochlear implants...
...but always feeling like they weren't... there was something missing. And feeling frustrated about that.
When they were finally exposed to a sign language and understood that there was not jus a language that was very accessible to them, whether they had the implant on or off...
...but a whole identity that went with that, that fit in some way with what they had experienced growing up... that was very liberating.
To be able to say: yes, I am deaf, it's not a bad thing to be deaf. I can hear, and that's a plus...
...but I am deaf. And there's a place that welcomes that, and there's an identity that fits with that.
The earlier we can give children, young implanted children, that affirmation that there is an identity, that's called 'deaf'...
...and it's not a bad thing to be, and that's what you are, and there's a language that goes along with that... the better. I think, the earlier the better.