Soundscapes

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Research on Soundscapes

& Aural Diversity

What can we do to improve access to the social environment in the school context for youth with a CI? Let's change the environment and make that fit for all...

For that, the daily life experiences of CI youth can give us crucial new insights, from which schools and other institutions can benefit to create an inclusive school environment, and ensure equity for all their students.

Every person hears the world around them differently. We call this "aural diversity". This only becomes a problem when your hearing does not match with your day-to-day activities, and you feel socially excluded or isolated, because of your hearing.

Being a deaf minority in a hearing society often means that you have to deal with barriers that are invisible for others. In fact, you have to deal with a world that seems designed for the "typically hearing". You are missing out on parts of conversations, you may feel unsafe in new places... and spend a lot of energy on trying to take part in daily life. When you come home, you feel exhausted...

This project focuses on the lived experiences of D/deaf adolescents and young adults who use cochlear implants (CIs) - a type of neural prosthesis that helps hearing speech. CI technology is quite advanced and many young CI-users successfully attend mainstream schools while using spoken language. BUT using CIs does not exactly mean that the deafness is "removed" (and that - from person to person - may not even be desirable).

Why CI-hearing is not quite like typical, acoustic hearing usually becomes clear in noisy settings or situations with multiple speakers. These limitations are significant in unstructured, social situations. Especially in adolescence and young adulthood communication barriers and not being able to participate fully in social life can be hard and isolating, affecting development and mental health.

To understand what can make unstructured, social environments (especially in schools) more CI-inclusive, this project includes:

• Interviews
• Go-along observations / walking interviews
• Co-design & expert groups with CI users
• Development of experimental settings for laboratory testing

To learn more about this project, you can contact Claudia.

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Collaborations

To make sure that the project's values, goals and methods are aligned with what is actually meaningful and useful to CI-users, the project uses participatory approaches that involve CI-users as experts during different stages of projects. Furthermore, we can benefit from a close collaboration with the ENT department of Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), as well as experts from adjacent fields like disability studies, design & architecture.

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People involved

Psychology, Leiden University - Claudia Libbi, Carolien Rieffe, Adva Eichengreen, Josine Buiskool, André Götze.

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) - Johan H.M. Frijns, Chris H. Stronks. 

Architecture, TU Delft University - Alexander Koutamanis.

Interaction Technology & Co-Design, University of Twente - Robby van Delden

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Related reads

Annual symposium on CI-users within INTENSE - read here!

Inclusive Schools for young d/Deaf CI users ESPCI 2023 - read here!

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Funding

This project is funded via INTENSE, which is a multidisciplinary effort to research, improve and evaluate brain implants like CIs and their effect on the people who use them in their daily lives.