My hearing is very good, probably better than that of many my age because I didn't ruin it in my teens with headphones and loud music. But I still find that I can understand what people say better if I can see their faces. Now I know why.
A Canadian study indicates that there is a signficant visual component of language understanding even amongst hearing people. The four-month-old babies in the study were able to distinguish when adults in a silent video were speaking English and when they were speaking French.
The eight-month-old babies could do the same, but only if they were being raised in a bilingual French/English environment.
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We used to tease my Aunt Jinni...we would start a conversation and she would say "Wait. Wait.", put on her glasses and say "Okay, now." We would tease her that she needed her glasses to HEAR!
Posted by
dstb
on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 8:48 am
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