OK all you cochlear implant users...and parents of users.. We had an interesting thing happen this morning. Andrew made a cardboard 'flute' and so I was humming Happy Birthday to him. (He will be 10 on Sunday.) I asked, "what song was that?" He said, "I have heard it but I don't know." This is a kid who remembers EVERYTHING. Then I hummed ABCs/Twinkle Twinkle. He said, is that Jingle Bells? I did it with a few more and he didn't catch any of them.
This is a kid who remembers EVERYTHING. (Did I say that already?) Of course we haven't done these in awhile. I can play any 'techno' song from a video game and he gets it. Is it just a 'remembering' thing? I thought about doing some 'testing/quiz' work but we are on antibiotics and coming off a couple of high intensity weeks. Maybe next week.
4 comments:
ABC's/Twinkle Twinkle is also Baa Baa Black Sheep, which took me years to realize.
I wonder what's been researched in terms of music and memory and "name that tune"?
I'm profound deaf since birth, have CI in one ear since 2003. I hummed birthday, twinkle star, and jingle bell to my hearing 9 years old son, and he got them all right. I asked him to hum some songs he know I would know, and out of 8, I only got one wrong. I think it is more of a tone deaf issue. people with CI tend to be more tone deaf than others.
Plus, he does remember jingle bell and all that if he shouted it out so I don't think it is memory problem.
Very interesting. I recall reading (perhaps in Michael Chorost's book?) about tests done on CI users by altering the rhythms of well-known songs (Twinkle-twinkle, Jingle Bells, Happy Birthday etc.) and altering the rhythms. The vast majority of CI users, even those that do beautifully, struggled immensely and were not able to get many of these right. Simply because the CI doesn't capture the pitches and such quite as well.
If I hear the instrumental version of a song I know, it often takes me a little while to figure it out, so the fact that you were humming (not singing) was likely the cause.
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