What language do the deaf think in?

Started by Chesu October 25th, 2009 11:06 PM
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Where The Carrots Be
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A though just occurred to me... How, exactly, do deaf people think? I know that when I think, I "hear" a voice not so different from my own using what I understand to be English. What are the thoughts of a person who only knows language as hand gestures and the written word like? I once knew a deaf guy, and I knew enough ASL to have casual conversations with him... but this question never came to me until now.

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The way I see it, depends what language(s) the person learned before he/she became deaf. When you do hand gestures and such, they'll already know that means "hand" and such in their language (which got me thinking how a person knows that it's a hand, but they speak a different language and never learned English XD ). True, there are people that were born deaf, so I would believe English or just sign language for the most part.
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Depends if they already knew a language before they became deaf or if they were originally deaf in the first place.

If they were deaf when born, I'd have no clue. Interesting topic, though.
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Maybe because of what they've learned before being deaf. Or insight learning. The only language they use is sign language and "lip reading", which they could figure out what word comes out my examining the lip movements. That's what I've heard.

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The purpose of a language is for the instantiation of meaning in communication. Verbal languages communicate meaning through images and sounds, and over time, one's sub conscious mind associates these sounds and meanings without one knowing. This is why people hear their natural language inside their heads.

Sign language is no different to other languages, it just uses gestures to convey meaning rather than sounds. The brain conjures up these gestures in ones head as thoughts pass, just the same as spoken words. It all depends on how long someone has been using sign language. The brain would need a certain amount of exposure before it begins to make these sub-conscious associations.

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I edited it, this concept made more sense, than what I thought before this.
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Your speculations raise a larger question: Can you think without language? Answer: Nope, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to. That's why deafness can have far more serious consequences than blindness, developmentally speaking. The blind suffer many hardships, not the least of which is the inability to read in the usual manner. But even those sightless from birth acquire language by ear without difficulty in infancy, and having done so lead relatively ordinary lives. A congenitally deaf child isn't so lucky: unless someone realizes very early that he's not talking because he can't hear, his grasp of communication may never progress beyond the rudiments.
The language of the deaf is a vast topic that has filled lots of books--one of the best is Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf by Oliver Sacks (1989). All I can do in this venue is sketch out a few basic propositions:
The folks at issue here are both (a) profoundly and (b) prelingually deaf. If you don't become totally deaf until after you've acquired language, your problems are . . . well, not minor, but manageable. You think in whatever spoken language you've learned. Given some commonsense accommodation during schooling, you'll progress normally intellectually.

Depending on circumstances you may be able to speak and lip-read.
About one child in a thousand, however, is born with no ability to hear whatsoever. Years ago such people were called deaf-mutes. Often they were considered retarded, and in a sense they were: they'd never learned language, a process that primes the pump for much later development. The critical age range seems to be 21 to 36 months. During this period children pick up the basics of language easily, and in so doing establish essential cognitive infrastructure. Later on it's far more difficult. If the congenitally deaf aren't diagnosed before they start school, they may face severe learning problems for the rest of their lives, even if in other respects their intelligence is normal.

The profoundly, prelingually deaf can and do acquire language; it's just gestural rather than verbal. The sign language most commonly used in the U.S. is American Sign Language, sometimes called Ameslan or just Sign. Those not conversant in Sign may suppose that it's an invented form of communication like Esperanto or Morse code. It's not. It's an independent natural language, evolved by ordinary people and transmitted culturally from one generation to the next. It bears no relationship to English and in some ways is more similar to Chinese--a single highly inflected gesture can convey an entire word or phrase. (Signed English, in which you'll sometimes see words spelled out one letter at a time, is a completely different animal.) Sign can be acquired effortlessly in early childhood--and by anyone, not just the deaf (e.g., hearing children of deaf parents). Those who do so use it as fluently as most Americans speak English. Sign equips native users with the ability to manipulate symbols, grasp abstractions, and actively acquire and process knowledge--in short, to think, in the full human sense of the term. Nonetheless, "oralists" have long insisted that the best way to educate the deaf is to teach them spoken language, sometimes going so far as to suppress signing. Sacks and many deaf folk think this has been a disaster for deaf people.

The answer to your question is now obvious. In what language do the profoundly deaf think? Why, in Sign (or the local equivalent), assuming they were fortunate enough to have learned it in infancy. The hearing can have only a general idea what this is like--the gulf between spoken and visual language is far greater than that between, say, English and Russian. Research suggests that the brain of a native deaf signer is organized differently from that of a hearing person. Still, sometimes we can get a glimpse. Sacks writes of a visit to the island of Martha's Vineyard, where hereditary deafness was endemic for more than 250 years and a community of signers, most of whom hear normally, still flourishes. He met a woman in her 90s who would sometimes slip into a reverie, her hands moving constantly. According to her daughter, she was thinking in Sign. "Even in sleep, I was further informed, the old lady might sketch fragmentary signs on the counterpane," Sacks writes. "She was dreaming in Sign."

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Well I'm going to be the oddity here and say that most of the time I don't think in English. When it's something specific, sure. I might think This is quite an interesting thread, for example. However, I'd say that the bulk of my thoughts are more images and feelings that actual specific words.

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Well I'm going to be the oddity here and say that most of the time I don't think in English. When it's something specific, sure. I might think This is quite an interesting thread, for example. However, I'd say that the bulk of my thoughts are more images and feelings that actual specific words.
Very true, though the percentage of how much each individual thinks visually varies. But this raises another question -- how does a blind person think?

I would imagine everyone with complications like deafness and blindness think with what they're used to communicating with, whether it's only sound or only sight. (And of course, this depends on how much a person has actually heard and seen -- not everyone is born blind or deaf.)
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I would imagine everyone with complications like deafness and blindness think with what they're used to communicating with, whether it's only sound or only sight. (And of course, this depends on how much a person has actually heard and seen -- not everyone is born blind or deaf.)
You would be correct. The Blind and deaf are capable of both visual and audibal dreams respectively if they've had some exposure to that in their life before developing the disability.

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perhaps deaf people don't think in Language. I am Bilingual in English and Spanish. Whenever I am having a conversation in English, I think in English. Whenever I am having a conversation in Spanish, I think in Spanish. I would assume that whenever a deaf person is having a conversation, they don't have audio in their thoughts. They just see sign language.

Maybe...

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I would say clicks or maby english they cant hear it but death people cna still say it hence they can image it.
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I think your thought process being perceived as a verbal dialect is... an aftereffect. I don't have any hard proof, but here's at least my theory from my experiences with the idea and logical reasoning: I believe the actual thought process you hear is a thought process being translated for your conscious self to relate and quickly understand the meaning in that state (which would be communication), which would probably be similar to why we dream in a certain language. The part of the brain that is responsible for the thought is separate from the parts used to receive info on sounds, so you should have the capability to do it if your deaf. Though the theory on using images is possible, since that's what they are more likely to relate things together (communication) with. The same for blind and death people, they might think in feelings. Thought is just a form of self communication, so you'd imagine that whatever a person's primary form of communication was is what they'd "think" in.

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Obviously deaf people can think without spoken language, as do birds and high mammals when solving problems presented to them. Most likely both think in concepts rather than a voice speaking to them in their head.

It makes no logical sense for thought to be based within language rather than vice versa simply because logical reasoning would have not developed without thought, and many creatures (as well as our distant ancestors) most likely did or do not have language but are capable of logical reasoning. Young children who also have not developed speech can also use logic and can prove their knowledge of concepts, so language is not necessary for understanding them. Obviously to understand them the child must be able to work with them within their minds (although at a more elementary level than an adult) and most likely the deaf think in such concepts as well.

It's kind of like when an artist wants to express something without words - rather than speaking their emotions in their head, they express it with an image they have in their head. When I want to express a thought, idea or emotion, I never think in thoughts, but rather, I delve myself into the world of the image I am trying to depict, so I "pseudo-live" this imaginary "reality" in order to express it properly. When working with difficult math ideas, I also work in the world of concepts rather than language or numbers.

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Picking up pieces from my Psychology class, so don't take this as correct word.
Go pick up an AP Psychology book if you want to know where I got this. And when I say "a person will do this" I'm taking this from experiments performed and verified as a highly plausible hypothesis as taught by our book.

Going down to the basics of basics of basics, your body communicates in nerves sending signals to another nerve. We get our conscious information of thinking from our use of language. A person can have a stroke and lose the use of their language because of damage to the brain. A deaf person can have a stroke that effects the same area, and will have problems signing. The deaf person's ability to communicate is with language, thus they would think the the language of signing, I think.

Trying to clarify, stay with me, the language center of your brain is on your left side. You have a 'cord' to connect the sides, but this can be severed and you will work normally. (This is usually done to help epilepsy.) The things you see with the left eye transmits to the right brain. People who have 'split-brains' will still get information from the left eye, but they cannot put this into words or language.
Spoiler:
When a split brain person stares at a dot in the middle of the board, on the left side there is the word HE and on the right side the word ART, when asked to say what word they saw, they will say ART. When asked to point with the left hand (the one connected to right brain without the language center) they will point to HE and will be genuinely surprised.

Your brain KNOWS information regardless of if you have the capacity to put that information into a cohesive language or not. So, deaf people will put that information together with the language they know, because in the wiring of their brain, sign language and oral language are both languages that have no difference in the way it is perceived by the brain.




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There was a study done quite a while ago (Before morals were an issue) on some babies, they were completely shut out from the rest of the world untill the age of 8 so that they couldn't learn any language. They eventually developed their own language. Presumably this is the same for the deaf, seeing as they wouldn't have heard any other language, they'd either think in their own language or just use sign language in their heads.



Mr Darcy III
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Think about this one for a minute.

When we talk and start to learn what words go to the things around us are brain starts to assign words to pictures and fealings, so a deaf person with no hearing could infact think in words its there brain theres no hearing involved, But a person without these assigned words and fealings would only know these things as pictures int here mind or mabey even a emotion, the fact is we will never now the truth unless some deaf person decides to speak up(wich i have no idea how) than we would know
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I think in words, as I can read, not being blind.
I think silently, as I can't talk or hear.

When I'm 'talking' to other deaf or mute people in signs, I think in signs.

It's like a white screen upon which hands, facing outwards, are doing sign language.
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