Which is more terrible, blindness or deafness?

What is the world like for the blind and the deaf? We might imagine that the world becomes dark after blindness and silent after deafness. According to the descriptions of patients with acquired blindness and acquired deafness, the facts are indeed very close to our guess. But which one is more terrible, blindness or deafness? In fact, deafness may have a greater impact on people.

Blindness and deafness both make people lose the ability to obtain information from the environment, which seriously affects daily life, but deafness is more harmful to language acquisition. This is because congenital deafness will directly interfere with the progress of language learning, and language plays a pivotal role in our brain development and social life. Language is not only the main tool for human communication and expression of ideas, but also the basis for our thinking and understanding of things. Learning a language is a process of listening, imitating, and self-correction, and deafness brings unimaginable difficulties to language learning.

1. There is a critical period for brain development

There are many critical development periods in the growth process of human beings. During this period, the brain is very plastic and will concentrate its strength to do big things, causing the neurons in the brain to start to "grow wildly" and eventually build a fast-response "highway" between the brain and organs. It is during this critical development period that babies quickly learn how to use their eyes, ears, hands and feet.

Once the critical period of development is not utilized well, it will be difficult to achieve normal level even if you make a hundred times more efforts. There was a report that a young couple blindfolded their baby during the critical period of vision. Although the baby's eyes and brain functions were normal, it still caused the child to be permanently blind.

In psychological experiments on language acquisition, psychologists have found that infants are in multiple critical periods of language development before the age of 5. If parents of congenitally deaf children do not notice their children's abnormalities, they will waste the opportunity for brain neurons to "build roads", and their efforts to catch up with other children in language will be half the effort.

2. Deaf people cannot hear pronunciation

Congenitally deaf people have never heard any sound. If they want to learn language, they can only rely on their eyes to see the shape of the mouth when speaking, or by touching the speaker's larynx and mouth to feel the fine muscle movements. Due to the lack of effective self-correction ability, the deaf people do not know whether their pronunciation is correct, and others cannot guide them to mobilize their oral muscles. They can only remind them in time when their pronunciation is correct and remember it through constant practice. Even so, the pronunciation of most deaf people is still not accurate enough, and they find it difficult to keep up with the rhythm of communication when others are speaking.

3. The way deaf people think will be affected.

The cultural brain hypothesis holds that the structure and function of the human brain are affected by environmental and social factors. The language we use changes the structure of our brain. For example, when native Chinese speakers and native English speakers think about the same problem, there are differences in the areas of brain activity, indicating that they are using different brain regions.

During infancy and early childhood, language learning and development is the most active stage of the brain. Through frequent auditory input and correction, children gradually build up their ability to understand language. Hearing is crucial in this process, helping children understand and distinguish the subtle differences between language words. The critical period of development is fleeting. If a person loses hearing at this time, he will not be able to learn language accurately, and his brain development will inevitably lag behind, missing out on opportunities for education and career development.

4. Deafness can have a negative impact on the mental health of people

Language is the cornerstone of human social interaction. The process of establishing connections with others, sharing experiences and expressing emotions requires the heavy involvement of language. People with congenital hearing loss have obvious difficulties in communicating with others and find it difficult to participate in normal social activities, which may lead to psychological problems such as loneliness, anxiety and depression, further worsening the health of the brain.

Seeing this, we all know that hearing loss can seriously affect a person's language learning and hinder normal social interaction, so the importance of protecting hearing is self-evident. For those who are suffering from hearing loss, we should provide corresponding support and help to ensure their normal learning, communication and participation in social activities, and guide hearing loss patients out of their predicament.

This article is a work supported by Science Popularization China Starry Sky Project

Author: Tang Yicheng

Reviewer: Fan Chunlei, Associate Researcher, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.