Deafness and hearing loss are widespread and found in every region and country. Currently more than 1.5 billion people (nearly 20% of the global population) live with hearing loss. 430 million of them have disabling hearing loss. It is expected that by 2050, there could be over 700 million people with disabling hearing loss.
Globally, 34 million children have deafness or hearing loss, of which 60% of cases are due to preventable causes. At the other end of the lifespan, approximately 30% of people over 60 years of age have hearing loss.
A person who is not able to hear as well as someone with normal hearing – hearing thresholds of 20 dB or better in both ears – is said to have hearing loss. Hearing loss may be mild, moderate, severe, or profound. It can affect one ear or both ears and leads to difficulty in hearing conversational speech or loud sounds.
'Hard of hearing' refers to people with hearing loss ranging from mild to severe. People who are hard of hearing usually communicate through spoken language and can benefit from hearing aids, cochlear implants, and other assistive devices as well as captioning.
'Deaf' people mostly have profound hearing loss, which implies very little or no hearing. They often use sign language for communication.
Deaf people think in terms of their “inner voice”. Some of them think in ASL (American Sign Language), while others think in the vocal language they learned, with their brains coming up with how the vocal language sounds. Additionally, their thinking process is a little different from hearing people. When they think, they’re seeing themselves signing from first person point of view or third person point of view. When they imagine a hearing person speaking, they imagine them signing instead of speaking because they can understand them that way.
Because there aren’t signs for every word in ASL, sometimes when deaf people want to think of a word that doesn’t have a sign, they finger-spell it. It’s like imagining letters in hand shapes. Finger-spelling occurs more frequently if a deaf person is reading words instead of signing them.
A number of the Deaf respondents to the Quora question suggest that this is indeed the case. However, the age at which hearing loss happens is likely to be important in determining the modality of inner speech/sign. One participant who lost his hearing at age 2 says he thinks in words, but words without sound, while another individual with early hearing loss describes "hearing" a voice in dreams in the absence of signs or lip movements.
Several studies have shed light on how individuals with hearing loss use inner sign. There is evidence that inner sign mediates short-term memory in signing individuals, just as inner speech mediates short-term remembering in hearing people. In a neuroimaging study, areas of the brain associated with inner speech were activated when signers thought to themselves in sign, suggesting a common neural pathway to thinking in language that is independent of the modality of that language.
It turns out, this varies somewhat from deaf person to deaf person, depending on their level of deafness and vocal training.
Those who were born completely deaf and only learned sign language will, not surprisingly, think in sign language. What is surprising is those who were born completely deaf but learn to speak through vocal training will occasionally think not only in the particular sign language that they know, but also will sometimes think in the vocal language they learned, with their brains coming up with how the vocal language sounds. Primarily though, most completely deaf people think in sign language. Similar to how an “inner voice” of a hearing person is experienced in one’s own voice, a completely deaf person sees or, more aptly, feels themselves signing in their head as they “talk” in their heads.
For those deaf people who are not completely deaf or wear devices to allow them to hear somewhat, they will often experience more vocal language in their “inner voice” in proportion to how much they can hear.
In order to understand how language affects our thoughts, and how this affects the way that deaf people think, we must first understand the underlying nature of human thought.
Humans generally think in strings of words, images, or a combination of both:
The ability to hear words can influence whether someone thinks in words or pictures. Many people who are born deaf have never had the chance to hear spoken speech. This makes it very unlikely that they can also think using spoken speech.
Instead, because the primary method for deaf people to process language is through visual forms of communication, they’re more likely to think in images. These images may be images and pictures of objects. Or, they may involve seeing word signs, such as in sign language, or seeing moving lips, such as with lip reading.
This phenomenon of visually seeing signs and moving lips may also be intertwined with auditory thoughts (words) in people who were not born deaf.
In this case, the thoughts of previously hearing people would be affected by how much language they learned and what their native language is, among other factors.
One Deaf respondent to the Quora question states "I have a 'voice' in my head, but it is not sound based. I am a visual being, so in my head, I either see ASL signs, or pictures, or sometimes printed words." For this respondent, sound is not a feature of the experience.
Researchers at the University of Colorado suggest that the portion of the brain devoted to hearing can become reorganized -- reassigned to other functions -- even with early-stage hearing loss and may play a role in cognitive decline.
Anu Sharma, of the Department of Speech Language and Hearing Science at University of Colorado, has applied fundamental principles of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to forge new connections, to determine the ways it adapts to hearing loss, as well as the consequences of those changes.
The work of Sharma's group centers on electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of adults and children with deafness and lesser hearing loss, to gain insights into the ways their brains respond differently from those of people with normal hearing.
Sharma, with her students Julia Campbell and Garrett Cardon, also recently made the discovery that "cross-modal recruitment of the hearing portion of the brain by the senses of vision and touch happens not only in deaf patients but is also clearly apparent in adult patients with only a mild degree of hearing loss."
"The hearing areas of the brain shrink in age-related hearing loss," she continued. "Centers of the brain that are typically used for higher-level decision-making are then activated in just hearing sounds."
The group's work suggests that the portion of the brain used for hearing can become reorganized, even in earliest stages of age-related hearing loss. And "these compensatory changes increase the overall load on the brains of aging adults," Sharma said. This finding has important clinical implications for developing early screening programs for hearing loss in adults.
While the brain’s ability to adapt and change is remarkable, the sad fact is that this reorganizing of cells in the auditory cortex often leads to more rapid cognitive decline. With age related hearing loss, the auditory cortex shrinks. Areas in the brain that are usually responsible for decision making or more cognitive tasks are activated just to hear sounds, leaving you with less brain power to think clearly or make decisions. These changes that start even at the early stages of hearing loss place a strain on the brain and help explain how hearing loss and dementia are related, since the reorganization taxes other areas of the brain, overloading and creating strain and fatigue.
Even in the earliest stages of hearing loss, neuroplasticity is at work, creating new connections, and leaving fewer and fewer cells dedicated to hearing. It’s really a case of use it or lose it, but with dire consequences. Once these new connections are made, and the brain has reorganized cells to be used for something other than hearing, these cells never go back to processing sounds, even if you get a hearing aid. This means that the longer you wait to seek treatment, and the longer you live with untreated hearing loss, the less effective that treatment will be when you finally start looking after your hearing. Hearing loss is no joke, and age-related hearing loss must be taken seriously as soon as it begins. “One in three adults over the age of 60 has age-related hearing loss,” says Sharma. “Given that even small degrees of hearing loss can cause secondary changes in the brain, hearing screenings for adults and intervention in the form of hearing aids should be considered much earlier to protect against reorganization of the brain.”
Being deaf is not that uncommon. According to data from the CDC, 44 million Americans (and about 17% of the adult population) suffer from hearing loss in both ears.
Hearing loss can range from mild to moderate to profound. The web’s largest hearing and hearing loss website, Hear-it, provides the following definitions:
Mild: People who suffer from mild hearing loss might have some difficulties keeping up with conversations, especially in noisy environments. The quietest sounds that can be heard are between 25 – 40 decibels (dB).
Moderate: Difficulties keeping up with conversations without a hearing aid. The quietest sounds that can be heard are between 40 – 70 dB.
Severe: People who have severe hearing loss need powerful hearing aids and often lip-reading skills as well. The quietest sounds they can hear are between 70 and 95 dB.
Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Hearing Loss
1. Deaf people are often (unfairly) accused of being rude
Nothing’s more annoying than being ignored when you’re trying to talk to someone, right? But next time you find yourself in this situation and start getting irritated, take a moment to consider if the person you’re talking to may be deaf or hard of hearing. If this is the case, they may simply not have heard or understood you (and given how small hearing devices are these days, it’s not always easy to tell).
2. Hearing is not the same as understanding
Deafness doesn’t just affect hearing – it has an impact on general communication skills too. This is largely because people who are deaf or hard of hearing have often had a lot less exposure to language and vocab throughout their lives. Make no mistake: this DOESN’T mean deaf people are stupid! It just means they have to work much harder to comprehend a conversation.
3. Hearing overload and exhaustion is a real thing
Think about how your head hurts after a long day of learning. It’s tiring having to work so hard to listen and understand, right? Well, spare a thought for people who are deaf. For them, communication is ALWAYS hard work, even if they’re just at a party or ordering a coffee. Whether they’re frantically lip-reading, or straining to hear what’s being said, it’s flat out exhausting.
4. Communicating in the dark is basically impossible
When you think about it, there are plenty of times when there’s little or no light, and you have to rely purely on hearing to communicate (think campfires, dance floors and cinemas). For most of us, this is no big deal – but if you’re deaf or hard of hearing, it’s another case entirely! Even with hearing devices like cochlear implants, many deaf people rely heavily on lip-reading.
5. Deaf people are twice as likely to suffer from depression and anxiety
Life can be tough at the best of times, but when you factor in the challenges of being deaf, it’s even tougher. Deaf people can become isolated, cut-off and left out very easily, especially when others don’t make enough effort to communicate. After all, communication is the core of most relationships – and we need those to live happy connected lives!
Myth: All hearing losses are the same.
FACT: The single term "deafness" covers a wide range of hearing losses that have very different effects on a person's ability to process sound, and thus, to understand speech.
Myth: All deaf people are mute.
FACT: Some deaf people speak very well and clearly; others do not because their hearing loss prevented them from learning spoken language. Deafness usually has little effect on the vocal cords, and very few deaf people are truly mute.
Myth: Hearing aids restore hearing.
FACT: Hearing aids amplify sound. They have no effect on a person's ability to process that sound. In cases where hearing loss distorts incoming sounds, a hearing aid can do nothing.
Myth: All deaf people can read lips.
FACT: Some deaf people are very skilled lip readers, but many are not. This is because many speech sounds have identical lip movements. For example, "b" and "p" look exactly alike on the lips.
Myth: All deaf people use sign language.
FACT: Many deaf people, especially those who were deaf at any early age, use sign language. Many others do not. There are several different sign systems in America which have been developed in addition to American Sign Language - the language commonly used by profoundly deaf people.
Myth: Deaf people are not sensitive to noise.
FACT: Some types of hearing loss actually accentuate sensitivity to noise. Loud sounds become garbled and uncomfortable. Hearing aid users often find loud sounds, which are greatly magnified by their aids, very unpleasant.
InnoCaption provides real-time captioning technology making phone calls easy and accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing community. Offered at no cost to individuals with hearing loss because we are certified by the FCC. InnoCaption is the only mobile app that offers real-time captioning of phone calls through live stenographers and automated speech recognition software. The choice is yours.
InnoCaption proporciona tecnología de subtitulado en tiempo real que hace que las llamadas telefónicas sean fáciles y accesibles para la comunidad de personas sordas y con problemas de audición. Se ofrece sin coste alguno para las personas con pérdida auditiva porque estamos certificados por la FCC. InnoCaption es la única aplicación móvil que ofrece subtitulación en tiempo real de llamadas telefónicas mediante taquígrafos en directo y software de reconocimiento automático del habla. Usted elige.
