Evan Lawrence
1/08/14
Super Abilities of the Deaf
Although the focus of any case of deafness has been
upon what Deaf individuals cannot do, it has more recently come to
general attention that there are a lot of advantages to being
without hearing.
In 2012 a young boy with mosaic trisomy 22 informed
his mother that he would no longer wear his hearing aid because
super heroes do not wear them. A plea was sent by his mother to
Marvel comics and a new character was created to inspire the hard of
hearing. This character was named Blue Ear who was able to invent a
super hearing device which allowed him to hear cries for help or
even “an ant hiccup on the other side of the country”. (Michelle,
2012).
What the creators of Blue Ear failed to
recognize is that there is a whole array of advantages to being
WITHOUT hearing. While the removal of one of our precious senses has
seemed for centuries as a disadvantage with the focus placed
entirely on what is lost, recent studies have changed the mindset of
the scientific community by demonstrating some very useful
advantages. These studies have found that if a person is born Deaf
or loses their hearing at a young age then the area of the brain
devoted to processing hearing does not go to waste but is remarkably
reorganized to help process the remaining senses. This phenomenon of
converting brain power deprived of stimulus to help support and
augment other senses is known as cross-modal neuroplasticity.
As a result, it has been demonstrated that individuals born Deaf can
process peripheral vision and motion better than hearing
individuals. In addition, “the researchers found this neural
reorganization affects how Deaf individuals perceive sensory
stimuli, making them susceptible to a perceptual illusion that
hearing people do not experience.” (Bates, 2012).
Another incredible advantage of being
Deaf or hard of hearing is that it will often be accompanied with
the ability to speak via signed gestures (sign language). Being
bilingual in general would, of course, be a huge advantage in life
but signing has some very specific advantages different from any
other type of language. Take very specific scientific discussion as
an example; at first glance it would seem a disadvantage to have to
spell out complex scientific terms or to create understandable
gestures but many Deaf students feel as though signing is much
easier to understand than spoken explanation. In one little
adjustment to either speed of motion, facial expression, etc… a
signing individual could portray exactly what is being demonstrated
without having to follow with lengthy explanation. “Such elegant
personifications of tricky scientific concepts leave some Deaf
students feeling sorry for those who rely on their ears.” (Quenqua,
2012).
A Deaf football team from Little Rock, Arkansas has
turned their shared, quick language into an competitive advantage
which has lead them to many victories over bigger teams from hearing
schools. They all already share the most efficient way to speak to
their coach and each other from across the field without the other
team being able to understand any of it. A hearing team will often
times try to simulate this with invented gestures to avoid having to
huddle up and yell over all of the noise but they aren’t likely to
become as quick and precise as a team of Deaf athletes. The coach of
a Deaf football team can tell a player exactly who to block or where
to pass the ball and the other team would be clueless. (Mitchell,
2013).
Yet another advantage of being Deaf is revealed in
studies of the of parents who signed to their children (as is common
in the Deaf world). In 1998 a development study was designed and
initiated involving two groups of infants between the ages of 10 and
20 months of age. This cross sectional and longitudinal study
involved one set of parents actively encouraging their babies to use
gesturing and preverbal communication to see if this would affect
cognitive and subsequent language development. These children were
“so highly motivated to communicate that they often spontaneously
recruit such “symbolic gestures” as a way around the obstacle posed
by the articulatory demands of verbal words”. Three important
results for the study included the infants using symbolic gesturing
if encouraged to do so, an indicated advantage for the signing group
in receptive and expressive development, and the signing children
scoring significantly higher on the Bayley MDI at 24 months of age.
They were then again assessed after their second grade year with the
WISC-III results indicating a continued outperforming for the
singing children six years later in the Verbal Sub-Scale, the
Performance Sub-Scale and to the Full IQ. (Acredolo, 2000).
Even though those people who do depend upon sound in
so many aspects of daily life could not imagine life without it,
there is no doubt that there is a silent world out there filled with
advantages for those living there.
References
Acredolo, Linda P. & Goodwyn, Susan W. (2000, July 18). The
longterm impact of symbolic gesturing during infancy on IQ at age 8.
www.babysigns.com. International Conference on Infant Studies.
Retrieved 09 Jan. 2014: < https://www.babysigns.com/index.cfm?id=113>.
Bates, Mary. (2012, Sept, 18). Super powers for the blind and
Deaf. Scientific American. Scientific American, a division of
Nature America, Inc. Retrieved 29, Dec. 2013: <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=superpowers-for-the-blind-and-deaf>
Castillo, Michelle. (2012, May, 27). Marvel team creates Deaf
superhero called Blue Ear in honor of boy. CBS News. CBS
Interactive Inc. Retrieved 29 Dec. 2013: <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/marvel-team-creates-deaf-superhero-called-blue-ear-in-honor-of-boy/>
Mitchell, Meredith. (2013, Sept. 13). Deaf Leapards feel they
have advantage on football field. www.thv11.com. THV11 a Gannett
Company. Retrieved 10 Jan. 2014.
<http://www.thv11.com/news/article/279615/2/Deaf-Leopards-feel-they-have-advantage-on-football-field>.
Quenqua, Douglas. (2012, Dec. 3). Pushing science’s limits in
sign language lexicon. www.nytimes.com. The New York Times.
Retrieved 10 Jan. 2014. < http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/science/sign-language-researchers-broaden-science-lexicon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&>.
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