What I hear with my little ear

By Diana Brent

As kids, when we went on long car trips travelling around BC, we did not have the luxury of the storybooks and cassette tapes that settled our own girls when they were growing up, or the phones and tablets that now keep our grandchildren amused for hours. And even though my mother invented lots of games where I was included, inevitably, “Count all the red cars you see,” or “I spy with my little eye,” worked their way into the mix. The adaption I invented, “I hear with my little ear,” was a catastrophic fail because nobody could guess questions like: “What do you hear right in front of you—the wall that I won’t run into,” or “What’s that sound about 2 meters in front of us as we’re crossing the street—the up curb on the other side.” Everybody just rolled their eyes—I think.

Rubber-soled shoes were the bane of my existence so when someone gave me an old pair of tap shoes, I was in heaven listening to the extra information they provided. I never learned to dance. I walked up to and through doorways without bumping their edges and counted driveways and openings between buildings and hedges, using these landmarks to learn my way around as I walked or rode my bike. I didn’t know it then, but I was using echolocation to make sense of and navigate safely through my world.

Echolocation is the technique our brain learns and uses to interpret the sounds we hear that bounce back from objects and hard surfaces in our immediate vicinity. Blind people who use this skill effectively sometimes snap their fingers or click their tongue against the roof of the mouth to glean the most information possible from the amplified sounds produced. This technique is not unique to blind people. A recent research study documented in Scientific American in December 2024, found that after 10 weeks of training, the brains of both blind and sighted individuals had learned to use echolocation to navigate mazes and other obstacles safely and efficiently.

As a child, I clicked and snapped, finding it quite handy, though I never internalized why. As an adult, I have given that up in favour of my reliable white cane and paying attention to the surfaces I feel under my feet to get the information I need.

At this point, you are forgiven if the phrase “blind as a bat,” has popped into your head unbidden. The only problem is that bats are not blind! Being cave-dwelling, nocturnal creatures, they too have adapted to their circumstances, using echolocation as well, but to a much more sophisticated level than we mere humans have.  

So now, can we extrapolate that blind people obviously hear better than our sighted friends and family? My answer is a hard “no!” The discussion must be reframed. In this context, my theory is that having sight distracts you from relying as much on your other senses, so you don’t need to pay as much attention to the information they are providing. Blind people do not have that luxury; therefore, our brains have rewired and adapted, training us to rely on our remaining senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing to more efficiently make sense of our world.

Furthermore, personal experience has shown me that, as we age, our ears are just as likely to wear out as YOUR ears and eyes are. Now, in my 70s, I am quite happily sporting hearing aids. But here’s the coolest thing. People are amazed at what a fantastic memory I must have, because when I am singing at karaoke, or participating at sing-alongs and playing an instrument so that my hands are busy and cannot read braille, I know all the words and obviously am not reading them off the big screen or looking them up on my phone. My secret: my husband sits anywhere in the room quietly feeding me the words one line ahead of where I am singing, using a little Bluetooth Partner mic that sends them directly into my hearing aids. The only thought I have now as I am writing this is the concern others may have for this poor elderly gentleman sitting staring at his phone or the screen urgently muttering to himself.