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A very interesting take on the perceptions of blind people. I don't think I am acquainted with anyone who has been entirely blind from birth (which is a rare co

A very interesting take on the perceptions of blind people. I don't think I am acquainted with anyone who has been entirely blind from birth (which is a rare condition of life). I know a professor of psychology (who indeed does much of his research on human visual perception)[1] who has very limited vision, and thus is "legally blind." He began life, I think, with a bit more vision than he has now, but has long been visually disabled. In a personal conversation, he related that his originally intended research field was astrophysics, which of course can be studied by analyzing instrument readings from radio telescopes and other devices that don't necessarily have visual outputs. My wife is his piano teacher, and she has had to adapt her teaching to her first student who cannot read a printed musical score. A much younger person I know who has very limited vision (and the prospect of declining vision as she grows up) attends summer mathematics programs with children running around playing soccer and Frisbee and seems to handle that with aplomb. To not even be able to recognize shapes or moving human beings, something that the blind people I know best are still able to do, would be especially challenging. Aside: Have you all noticed that people who have acquired profound deafness that begins in adulthood have much less understandable speech than people with normal hearing? Apparently we all rely on feedback from our own senses to keep our speech behavior within the phonologically normal range of whatever language we speak as a native language, and habit alone can't maintain the fine tolerances necessary for readily understandable speech. AFTER EDIT: Of course anyone can experience total lack of sight simply by going into a totally unlighted place. The human eye doesn't emit vision rays, after all (even though the ancient Greeks seemed to think otherwise), so if you are where there is no light, you see nothing with your eyes.[2] Studies on the human diurnal behavior cycle are sometimes done in deep caves with no source of artificial light. [1] http://legge.psych.umn.edu/ http://legge.psych.umn.edu/ [2] http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/03/50-of-college-students-think-we-see.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/03/50-of-college-students-thin... http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/30/241906619/seeing-in-the-pitch-dark-is-all-in-your-head http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/30/241906619/seeing-...

pixelcort 12y ago
Originally from SF area, I have been living in Tokyo for over a year now, and since moving I rarely speak with native English speakers anymore. I've been told by friends and family on occasion my accent and grammar is slowly deteriorating.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  The Americans I knew when I lived overseas for three years (on each of two stays that long) definitely had trouble with vocabulary retrieval, the more trouble the longer they had been away from native speakers of English. Correspondingly, Chinese people I know who have been away from places with lots of Chinese printed text often have a lot of trouble writing Chinese characters that everyone learns in school. Even "overlearned" skills that become second nature can degrade through lack of continued practice.
- Swizec 12y ago
  Similarly, I've spent a lot of time in the US lately and people can no longer really place my accent. It sounds neither native to here, nor what people from back home have. Quite odd.
- jarek 12y ago
  Yes, this is common, due to lack of use. Though you should notice that you have much less trouble reading and listening than writing and speaking. I immigrated right around the "easy"-language-acquisition barrier age and frustratingly can't speak either of my languages fully right - one because of leftover accent, one because of out-of-use vocab and grammar atrophy.
grownseed 12y ago
In regards to your aside, I essentially went through the opposite situation, i.e. I gradually lost my hearing as a kid (genetic condition) until I was completely deaf, and then got a bunch of surgeries which fixed the situation (until I lose everything again in about 15 years, or so I'm told). In any case, my speech was affected in the way you describe. Most soft sounds started merging, e.g. 's', 'sh', 'tsh', etc. would all end up sounding like 'sh' coming from my mouth, and I had absolutely no idea that was the case. Similarly, I had no idea what the volume of my voice was, it'd either be really loud or really quiet, but rarely at the right level. My parents (mostly) told me I wasn't speaking properly (it took years before anybody realized I was going deaf, including myself), I ended up relying heavily on the vibrations I felt in and around my mouth/throat to correct these as much as possible. Interesting aside to this aside, there exist implants for people who were born without a cochlea (the spiraly thing which "translates" vibrations). These implants are made of some alloy (not sure what exactly) which thankfully emulate a cochlea, but have the interesting side-effect of causing the affected people to speak with a fairly monotone and somewhat metallic voice.

pixelcort 12y ago

Originally from SF area, I have been living in Tokyo for over a year now, and since moving I rarely speak with native English speakers anymore. I've been told by friends and family on occasion my accent and grammar is slowly deteriorating.

tokenadult 12y ago
The Americans I knew when I lived overseas for three years (on each of two stays that long) definitely had trouble with vocabulary retrieval, the more trouble the longer they had been away from native speakers of English. Correspondingly, Chinese people I know who have been away from places with lots of Chinese printed text often have a lot of trouble writing Chinese characters that everyone learns in school. Even "overlearned" skills that become second nature can degrade through lack of continued practice.
Swizec 12y ago
Similarly, I've spent a lot of time in the US lately and people can no longer really place my accent. It sounds neither native to here, nor what people from back home have. Quite odd.
jarek 12y ago
Yes, this is common, due to lack of use. Though you should notice that you have much less trouble reading and listening than writing and speaking. I immigrated right around the "easy"-language-acquisition barrier age and frustratingly can't speak either of my languages fully right - one because of leftover accent, one because of out-of-use vocab and grammar atrophy.

grownseed 12y ago

In regards to your aside, I essentially went through the opposite situation, i.e. I gradually lost my hearing as a kid (genetic condition) until I was completely deaf, and then got a bunch of surgeries which fixed the situation (until I lose everything again in about 15 years, or so I'm told). In any case, my speech was affected in the way you describe. Most soft sounds started merging, e.g. 's', 'sh', 'tsh', etc. would all end up sounding like 'sh' coming from my mouth, and I had absolutely no idea that was the case. Similarly, I had no idea what the volume of my voice was, it'd either be really loud or really quiet, but rarely at the right level. My parents (mostly) told me I wasn't speaking properly (it took years before anybody realized I was going deaf, including myself), I ended up relying heavily on the vibrations I felt in and around my mouth/throat to correct these as much as possible. Interesting aside to this aside, there exist implants for people who were born without a cochlea (the spiraly thing which "translates" vibrations). These implants are made of some alloy (not sure what exactly) which thankfully emulate a cochlea, but have the interesting side-effect of causing the affected people to speak with a fairly monotone and somewhat metallic voice.