5 ms·

Humans Can Learn How to 'Echolocate' in 10 Weeks, Experiment Shows

56 points by samizdis 5y ago

cafard 5y ago
I once read a piece on the country musician Doc Watson, who was blind. He said that he used "echolocation" a fair bit, and that when a stand of trees opposite his house was cut it disoriented him for a while.
breatheoften 5y ago
I hope they also sent the participants through new mazes after training while asking them not to echolocate -- just to help determine that they weren't getting better at sightless maze walking for some other reason (like greater sensitivity to signals from the skin and hair) ... It's kind of amazing what information our bodies perceive -- I'm thinking about the phenomenon of walking down the street talking to someone next to you while not looking ahead only to suddenly realize that you've stopped and leaned dramatically backward with your head inches from a sign you didn't see ... I'd love to learn this echolocation skill and then volunteer to help train blind folks that haven't been taught ... I'm obsessed with echolocation.
- justinclift 5y ago
  > I'd love to learn this echolocation skill ... You can quite literally teach yourself. It's not hard in any way. As a _very basic_ start, sometime after dark go and stand a few inches from a wall (facing it). Make a few (fairly loud) clicking sounds with your tongue. Notice what the sound returning from the wall is like. Then step back a pace or two, and to it again. You'll get the hang of "something close in front of me" vs "something 1 meter or two away from me" pretty quickly. Once you've got that, it's pretty easy to expand out the skill set. :)
  - benibela 5y ago
    Why use tongue clicking rather than your voice?
    - justinclift 5y ago
      Well, I guess you could but tongue clicking works and it gives a fairly precise sound. Maybe try both ways out yourself, and see how it goes? :)
cbanek 5y ago
I think I saw this on Penn & Teller's Bullshit, or maybe some other show with them. There was a blind man using echolocation and the tongue clicking to ride a bicycle. It was so cool!
mikewarot 5y ago
I remember long ago, when I used to watch TV, a story of a man who figured it out when he was a child, and eventually learned to ride a bicycle, and started teaching it to others. Thanks to search engines, and video on demand... here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA
LorenPechtel 5y ago
The problem with echolocation is that it degrades as you age. My mother was blind from infancy--as a child she could run along the sidewalk, able to sense the curbs. As an adult she could walk through a familiar room accurately enough you would have no idea she was blind. In her old age she couldn't hear the room anymore, she had to move slowly and likely would go off course even then. Growing up knowing it was possible as a child I was able to move about slowly except I couldn't sense stuffed furniture. As an adult, nothing--but I have some pretty major high frequency hearing loss, origin unknown.
- meepmorp 5y ago
  I learned to echolocate as a kid, and to me our living room couches sounded like black holes. We had wood floors, and I think the way they reflected sound made the absence more obvious. I can still do it, but like you say, high end frequency loss is a major factor. My accuracy is nothing like it was.
- helph67 5y ago
  > As an adult, nothing--but I have some pretty major high frequency hearing loss, origin unknown. I believe that's normal in old age.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    I said "as an adult", not "old age". I'm not aware of any hearing tests as a child, as an adult I know I have the portion required to understand speech but major loss both above and below that.
rowanG077 5y ago
So Johnny English was right after all.
salmo 5y ago
I wonder how you could find training for this? It sounds absolutely fascinating. My wife and I have always had problems camping and hiking at night. My night vision is great. Hers is abysmal (she also would wear coke bottle glasses without her contacts). I hate flashlights because they ruin that night vision and make it so that I can only see a spot vs everything around me. It would be awesome for her to "see" in the dark, and I just think it would be an awesome skill.
- calebh 5y ago
  All you need is a red colored flashlight. I have used these during astronomy to read star charts without ruining my night vision.

56 points by samizdis 5y ago

I once read a piece on the country musician Doc Watson, who was blind. He said that he used "echolocation" a fair bit, and that when a stand of trees opposite his house was cut it disoriented him for a while.

breatheoften 5y ago

I hope they also sent the participants through new mazes after training while asking them not to echolocate -- just to help determine that they weren't getting better at sightless maze walking for some other reason (like greater sensitivity to signals from the skin and hair) ... It's kind of amazing what information our bodies perceive -- I'm thinking about the phenomenon of walking down the street talking to someone next to you while not looking ahead only to suddenly realize that you've stopped and leaned dramatically backward with your head inches from a sign you didn't see ... I'd love to learn this echolocation skill and then volunteer to help train blind folks that haven't been taught ... I'm obsessed with echolocation.

justinclift 5y ago
> I'd love to learn this echolocation skill ... You can quite literally teach yourself. It's not hard in any way. As a _very basic_ start, sometime after dark go and stand a few inches from a wall (facing it). Make a few (fairly loud) clicking sounds with your tongue. Notice what the sound returning from the wall is like. Then step back a pace or two, and to it again. You'll get the hang of "something close in front of me" vs "something 1 meter or two away from me" pretty quickly. Once you've got that, it's pretty easy to expand out the skill set. :)
- benibela 5y ago
  Why use tongue clicking rather than your voice?
  - justinclift 5y ago
    Well, I guess you could but tongue clicking works and it gives a fairly precise sound. Maybe try both ways out yourself, and see how it goes? :)

cbanek 5y ago

I think I saw this on Penn & Teller's Bullshit, or maybe some other show with them. There was a blind man using echolocation and the tongue clicking to ride a bicycle. It was so cool!

mikewarot 5y ago

I remember long ago, when I used to watch TV, a story of a man who figured it out when he was a child, and eventually learned to ride a bicycle, and started teaching it to others. Thanks to search engines, and video on demand... here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtVOK04XvA

LorenPechtel 5y ago

The problem with echolocation is that it degrades as you age. My mother was blind from infancy--as a child she could run along the sidewalk, able to sense the curbs. As an adult she could walk through a familiar room accurately enough you would have no idea she was blind. In her old age she couldn't hear the room anymore, she had to move slowly and likely would go off course even then. Growing up knowing it was possible as a child I was able to move about slowly except I couldn't sense stuffed furniture. As an adult, nothing--but I have some pretty major high frequency hearing loss, origin unknown.

meepmorp 5y ago
I learned to echolocate as a kid, and to me our living room couches sounded like black holes. We had wood floors, and I think the way they reflected sound made the absence more obvious. I can still do it, but like you say, high end frequency loss is a major factor. My accuracy is nothing like it was.
helph67 5y ago
> As an adult, nothing--but I have some pretty major high frequency hearing loss, origin unknown. I believe that's normal in old age.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  I said "as an adult", not "old age". I'm not aware of any hearing tests as a child, as an adult I know I have the portion required to understand speech but major loss both above and below that.

rowanG077 5y ago

So Johnny English was right after all.

salmo 5y ago

I wonder how you could find training for this? It sounds absolutely fascinating. My wife and I have always had problems camping and hiking at night. My night vision is great. Hers is abysmal (she also would wear coke bottle glasses without her contacts). I hate flashlights because they ruin that night vision and make it so that I can only see a spot vs everything around me. It would be awesome for her to "see" in the dark, and I just think it would be an awesome skill.

calebh 5y ago
All you need is a red colored flashlight. I have used these during astronomy to read star charts without ruining my night vision.