Do Blind People Actually Hear Better Than Sighted People or is This Just a Hollywood Myth

This video is #sponsored by Raycon.

→Subscribe for new videos every day!

Follow Simon on social media:

Never run out of things to say at the water cooler with TodayIFoundOut! Brand new videos 7 days a week!

More from TodayIFoundOut:

How Did They Get the CGI in the 1993 Jurassic Park to Look So Good?

What Function Does Natural Aspirin Serve in Plants?

In this video:

If Daredevil has taught us anything, it’s that, while a closely guarded secret within the blind community, blind people inevitably all become superheroes after losing their sight thanks to their other senses being insanely enhanced. But when talking the real world, does this enhancing of one’s other senses really occur when the lights go out permanently?

Sources:

[JennyMorash]

As a blind person, and for those who really prefer the anecdotal: yup. The phrase I use when asked about this (and I get asked this a lot) is: “I don’t hear any better than you, but I do listen better than the average person.” It is absolutely a learned skill. I have always been visually impaired, but not always blind.

An example of what I can hear: yesterday, I walked into the massage clinic where I work for the first time since lockdown began. The lobby now has a new plexiglass shield over the front desk, and when I was perhaps two or three feet away, I could hear that it was there. Not because it made a sound, but because it completely changed the sound landscape of an area I was very familiar with. I hope that makes sense.

Thank you so much for doing this one, Simon.

[shaunw]

When I was a kid, I knew an old blind man at church who was an excellent Jazz drummer. I had heard my parents mention that blind people often have better hearing and are often great musicians because of this, citing the great Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder.... So I asked him. He smiled, chuckled and said something like " I could concentrate better than the other guys in the band because I wasn't distracted by that sweet blonde at the front " . I had to mention this, he was brilliant and I hadn't thought of him in years.

[mindofthelion]

11:33 When I was a child, I was mute. My mother and I learned rudimentary sign language to communicate. I also learned to read and write at a very young age, so I wound up writing before I could fluently speak. My inner voice was more like an inner typewriter (I joke that I think in Comic Sans). Now I am relearning sign language, and I think in a mixture of speech, text, and ASL.

[knottheory]

My uncle was blinded as an adult. He explained it like this: He didn't hear any better after losing his sight, but over time, out of sheer necessity, he learned to pay closer attention to what he heard. Things like clicks, taps, echoes, footsteps etc. that he used to ignore he paid more attention to.

He also learned that the sense of touch is more sensitive than he realized. He could with amazing accuracy distinguish between different denominations of US dollar bills, the exception being if you gave him brand new bills it would throw him off.

He also developed an uncanny sense of timing and direction. He was the best navigator in a car you could imagine. He would navigate like this:

"Back out of the driveway to your left. Straighten up, you're going to go forward for about two minutes until you hit three bumps. After you hit the third bump turn right..."

[christines]

I have an 11 year old collie who lost her eye sight due to collie eye disease at around 8 months old. Unfortunately, CEA is fairly prevalent in the collies, with many dogs, at least in the show lines, being carriers. My dog has 2 parents with " go normal" eyes.
She does rely on her other senses more than my other dogs. She has a fantastic memory and never misses the dog door. She takes the same path around the yard and is confident enough to trot. Put a little vanilla extract on the ball and she can play fetch. Shes great at hide and go seek, better than the sighted dogs. I am pretty sure she's using touch through her paws, smell and memory to navigate her environment.
Interestingly, she copies the sighted dogs in doing stuff like looking out the window. The other dogs seem to understand she can't see and incorporate it into thier games. She does not know they can see.

[gerthjaanimae]

As a person who is blind sinse birth I would like to point out that even if we may have a bit better hearing, meaning that our brains can process more information coming from our ears, it also comes with some caveats. The main thing, at least for me is that the sense of hearing can quite easily get overloaded. Especially in the crouded places it can get quite difficult to understand what the heck is going on. It can be so called remedied with some alcohol, because as many of you are aware of, it slows down the brain activity and thus lessens the feeling of overload, but of course in the long run it is not the healthiest solution. Although in some places, such as the bar or a pub environment it works quite well, hehe.
Otherwise it is quite good video at explaining things and I do consider sharing it with my sighted acquaintances when I do not happen to have time to explain the topic my self. :)

[mgthestrange]

As someone who went blind 6 years ago, I was interested in this video as, this sounds odd, I wasn’t sure. And yes, it is just that I notice sounds more than I used to and I have subconsciously learned how to relate sounds related to how far away they are and you do just have to pay more attention to your surroundings.. At first, I used to be exhausted after even short walks due to the amount of concentration needed but it just comes a bit more naturally.

[BothHands]

6:00 thank god you brought this up. i was screaming inside my head, that it depends if the blindness is caused by damage to the visual cortex, or if it's due to damage to the eyes. in the latter case, neuroplasticity will allow the auditory cortex to use those unused neurons, but this of course takes years and years, and happens very gradually.

[annapineda]

I have been a teacher of the Deaf for 20 years. I work with students who are Deafblind as well as students who come to California from other countries and are teenagers who often have had no formal language or education. (I love my job!)

I started watching this video wondering what Simon and his team would say about Deafness. It was very well researched and pretty darned accurate! Nice job!

Thank you ‘Today I Found Out’ for sharing this information with people who may not have thought about it before.

[Talik]

3:24 I love how you can visually see Simon realize how weird "you turn down the radio so you can see better" as he says it

[GrimKeeper]

Being born blind in one eye growing up I would always say yes my hearing was better but as I got older I realized it was exactly as Simon said. I paid more attention to things audibly. Is audily even a word? Never mind you get what I'm saying. Awesome work guys.👍

[worsel]

As someone who is on the verge of losing my hearing I can tell you that my sense of smell has gone through the roof. I never thought I would live to have the ability to smell who was in a room like a dog.

[limalicious]

This is honestly one of those topics where this is exactly what I figured it would be.

[highmajorus]

When I was little I remember hearing a story about a guy how had been blinded in an accident damaging the part of his brain that processed visual data and not his optic nerves or eyes, eventually his brain rewired itself to processes the visual data in an entirely different area of the brain restoring his sight.

[NoBudjetFilms]

You know how in fiction telepaths can "hear the words in your mind" I would be interested to see how thinking in sign language would work as a defense.

[KaiTheKidd]

"Or more technically, it's just known as WITCHCRAFT!"

I need a reaction gif of this and whenever someone asks something with an answer too complicated for them to understand or I'm too lazy to explain I just use the gif!

[Mr-Damage]

My mother went blind from diabetes when she was about 25 yo due to the old school insulin and the fact that the blood vessels in the eyes are the thinnest of any in the body it's natural that they block up first and the eyes stop working ( in her case it went from healthy vision to complete dark in about 3 weeks. )
I noticed that her hearing was phenomenally good. Maybe not better but more attuned than a sighted person had, much more.
She was unable to learn braille as having her fingers pricked to get a drop of blood 5- 6 times a day since the age of 6 to conduct a blood sugar levels test destroyed the nerve endings in her fingertips.
Paper money was much easier than plastic notes because it could be folded whereas plastic notes cant fold ( you fold different denominations in different shapes ). Our family dog ( Labrador ) had never had guide dog training but instinctively knew he had a job to do and then started escorting mum where ever she went. Traveling overseas was always awesome as airlines would bump her/ us up to first class just to be nice and once as a 12 yo lad when me and her where on the way back from NZ to Oz after she was all comfy up in the 747 hump I was escorted to the 4th jumpseat opposite the flight engineer and behind the captain for the entire flight because back in the day any 12 yo escorting a blind woman overseas deserved a treat.

[Elesario]

I find that when I concentrate on one sense, I tend to tune out the other senses to a high degree. If I listen hard, I sometimes go "blind" even though my eyes are open, I couldn't really tell you about what I was looking at. Of course, my mind is still controlling my eyes and when I focus again I often find my eyes looking where they probably shouldn't be :D. When I'm focused visually I stop listening; I don't have to turn down the radio, I just stop absorbing it; I lose track of so many conversations this way :/

[thomaspc]

Thanks, Simon. this was interesting. My grandfather was totally blind from the time my dad was a boy. It didn't really stop him any though.
Of course you turn down the radio to better see something as you drive. It's all about your attention and focusing your attention on seeing rather than the radio taking your attention. We were taught that in driver's ed way back, well, many decades ago.

[stuffedsomething]

A pic of a blind person with the caption, "how do deaf people think?"
We live in a world, huh