Can deaf people hear themselves think? When they read silently, do they hear the words in their head? Do they get tinnitus? Does silence have a sound?
I’m not deaf, but I’m profoundly hearing impaired. Though I wear hearing aids most of the time, I can’t have them on all the time. Silence does have a sound. It’s not a sound I can explain, but it is one.
How would a person who’s been deaf since birth hear words in their heads? I do, myself, but that’s because I’ve been hearing words through my aids all my life. Someone who has never heard a word being spoken would of course not hear them.
Yeah, loud & clear. I wonder whose voices they are though.
You might want to rephrase that OP. I say this because I find it incredibly offensive. In case this has escaped your notice; NOT ALL LANGUAGE HAS SOUND.
Monty, wha?
I honestly and truely don’t undersand what you find offensive about the OP. I reread it five times and don’t see where she made the assumption that you imply. Even if she did it was out of a lack of understanding, not spite. Why the venom?
Could you please enlighten us about what you found so offensive? I’m not being snarky here, I really want to know. This is GQ, you really should try to answer the question of a new person a bit more politely.
Haj
You have got to be joking. The OP is about as inoffensive as it gets. If you are going to hoist yourself up in scarlet indignation at the thought that 99% of the planet might possibly link human language with “sound”, and ask well meaning questions based on this assumption, you’re going to need a full bottle of whatever elephant sedatives you normally take to get you through the holidays.
effiesmom, you may find this article enlightening.
I don’t see anything even mildly offensive about the OP.
agroof
[slight hijack]
**Deaf schizophrenics, he continued, have auditory hallucinations, and blind schizophrenics have visual ones. **
Just to clarify, I doubt the validity of this last statement, and I’m not sure on what evidence it is based. Not only is it very rare that schizophrenics have visual hallucinations, but I’ve read several papers that confirm that people who have been blind since birth do NOT think or dream in images - so I wonder why schizophrenics would be an exception.
[/hijack]
I wondered the same thing. Maybe the hallucinations come from a different part of the brain.
Haj
Monty: when I registered, I agreed to this. How did they let you register if you didn’t agree to it, too? …
"Registration to this forum is free! We do insist that you abide by the rules and policies detailed below. If you agree to the terms, please press the Agree button at the end of the page. Note: By pressing the button you declare that you are over the age of 13. If you are 13 or under, please use this registration form.
We have one basic rule: Don’t be a jerk."
Anyway, thanks to those of you who defended my question. I wasn’t asking about language; I was asking about sound. Thanks for understanding my intentions - I meant no offense; “we don’t know what we don’t know.”
effiesmom
Monty is a troll of the lowest caliber. He’s been causing problems on some other threads I’ve read. I think it’ll only be a matter of time before one of the Mods relieves us of Monty’s company.
I don’t know about that, he’s one of the first people to register on the SDMB (in this incarnation) so he’s been around for a while.
Haj
Always happy to answer your query, haj.
I’m tired of encountering people who got this idea in their heads that the only thinking humans can do is via “real language,” ie., sound-based languages.
Could you please enlighten us about what you found so offensive? I’m not being snarky here, I really want to know. This is GQ, you really should try to answer the question of a new person a bit more politely.
[/QUOTE]
Certainly.
The Deaf can’t hear. Their thinking is in their brains. They don’t have to hear to understand the language they use.
[qutoe]When they read silently, do they hear the words in their head?
[/quote]
Ah, so the written word must obviously be interpreted only via sound, it appears. So, when the Deaf read, they must only be understanding it via that magical sound provided inside their brains.
This part didn’t offend me.
Stupid comment which I found offensive because it was linked to the other offensive comments.
Nice Pit comments there, astro. Wrong forum of course. Too bad they have no relevance to Reality. Try that sometime.
Apparently you didn’t really agree to it what with the bolded comment above, hey?
Bullshit. You were asking about how the Deaf thought. You evidently equated thinking language with hearing language.
Cool if you meant no offense. Would it have been so damn hard to reword the query once you realized that it’s offensive? Or was it just better for you to make the jerkish comment I bolded above?
Proof please.
Please provide (a) proof of what exactly the problem is, and (b) proof that I caused it.
Or maybe even your company for flat-out violating the rule against calling another poster a troll.
I am amazed at some people’s persistence in taking offense where there was obviously none meant, and the offense-taking requires a level of wanting to find offense to be taken that most people lack.
I’ve wondered the question before, although at the same time I’ve also asked myself “How would a person deaf from birth know if he or she was hearing things? How could he or she describe it as sound, if it were something he or she had never experienced?” It holds the same fascination for me as the idea of whether what I see when I look at a thing labelled “green” and what YOU see when you look at a thing labelled “green” are the same. How would we know that, either, if we know it by the same word and have no other means of explaining it?
I think what the OP was wanting to know was… do the deaf create auditory representations of the words they use when they think or read. It’s a perfectly innocent question. I guess the lesson effiesmom can take away from this is “if you have a question, keep it to yourself, lest you inadvertently offend someone that can’t get past the fact that everyone is not as ‘enlightened’ as them”. Welcome to the boards!
I don’t remember this very clearly but I’m told I was almost completely deaf before I had an operation at 4 and still severely deaf after that. Regardless, I had taught myself to talk by lip reading by the time I was 2 and was talking fairly well, enough to fool most people actually. I heard sounds when I spoke and heard my own thoughts though I didn’t hear any sound when watching TV or hearing others speak.
I do remember the first time I actually heard a tv. Right after I got my first hearing aid and came home, I sat down in front of the tv and turned it on. When it came on, it startled me and I jumped back and looked at my mom and said, “Mommy, tv talks!”
I was almost 5. The july 4th fireworks that year scared the heck outta me too.
Silence does have a sound but I don’t believe that only deaf people can hear it. If you are still and quiet long enough, you’ll hear it too. The brain will create stimulus if the environment doesn’t provide it.
I do get tinnitus. Hope that helps answer your questions. I think Monty is being an idiot, I don’t find your questions the least bit offensive or requiring of any rephrasing.
Answer the question or get out of GQ.
If you think the question is offensive, you are free to say so, but not in this forum. Take it to the BBQ Pit or private e-mail. If you think it is stupid to take offense at the question, take that to the BBQ Pit or e-mail too. And for the second time this week, I will repeat that accusations of trolling do not belong in GQ.
bibliophage
moderator GQ