Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey.
Hearing loss can be caused by any number of things; anything from illnesses, to head injury,
to listening to music too loudly can result in some sort of deafness.
Roughly 20% of Americans report some degree of hearing loss.
However, despite the prevalence of deafness of varying degrees, a significant proportion
of the population doesn't quite understand how deafness works.
Does life become a vaccuum completely devoid of sound, or can certain things be heard?
Let's explore.
If you're already heading down to the comment section, If you want more What If videos,
check out our “Biggest Science Questions” playlist on the channel.
Now get ready, it’s time to ask the question: What do deaf people hear?
Before jumping into the answer, there are some misconceptions about deafness that might
be best put to bed.
Many believe that it is more politically correct to refer to deaf people as "hearing impaired".
While their hearts may be in the right place, this is actually not the preference of the
majority of deaf people.
Most deaf people prefer not to view their deafness as an impairment, but rather a part
of who they are.
This is an idea that's prevalent in deaf culture, but hasn't quite made its way into the mainstream.
So if you're not sure how to refer to someone, first of all you can just ask, but when in
doubt, Deaf seems to be the safer bet.
Okay, with that out of the way, what do deaf people hear?
Well, it all depends on the level of deafness of each individual.
Hearing loss can be defined as a sudden or gradual decrease in how well one can hear.
There are four different classifications of hearing loss: Mild, Moderate, Severe, and
Profound.
Each of these can be caused by a number of factors, and each can perceive different amounts
of sound.
That is to say, if you want to know what a deaf person can hear, you need to know just
how much of their hearing they have lost.
Individuals with mild hearing loss are able to hear sounds as low as 25-40 decibels, with
each individual having slightly different thresholds for hearing.
This is the level that would be considered "hard of hearing" in common parlance.
These people can generally go about their lives more or less unaffected, although they
may have trouble picking up softer sounds.
Conversation can sometimes be difficult to understand, particularly if there is a lot
of noise in their surroundings interfering with the conversation.
This becomes more common as we age, due both to hearing loud noises over the course of
one's life, as well as certain medical issues that affect the hearing.
With these people, a hearing aid can generally allow them to hear sounds of any level.
Moving on, those with moderate hearing loss generally can't hear anything below 40-70
decibels.
This can cause significantly more problems than mild hearing loss.
Someone who could hear down to 40 decibels wouldn't be able to hear birds chirping, or
low ambient noise, but if it was on the severe side of moderate, they could have some trouble
hearing normal conversation, or even music playing in the same room.
Since increasing a sound by 6-10 decibels effectively doubles our preception of its
loudness, there is a huge difference between those who can hear down to 40, and those who
can only hear down to 70.
However, those with moderate hearing loss can see great improvement with the use of
a hearing aid.
Moving on to severe hearing loss, this is where it becomes seriously debilitating.
Those with severe hearing loss have a very high threshold for sound, needing a sound
to be at least 70 to 95 decibels to hear it.
Again, this threshold varies from person to person.
Those who can hear down to 70 decibels can still get by with a regular hearing aid, but
those with a threshold of 95 decibels would need a powerful hearing aid to hear most things.
Someone on the high end of severe loss could have trouble hearing a motorcycle from 25
feet away, often depending on lip reading or sign language to communicate.
This is the level of hearing loss that is generally required in order to receive disability
benefits, although the rules vary from country to country.
Finally, we have profound hearing loss.
People in this group vary in the profundity of the loss, with some able to hear some very
loud sounds above 95 decibels, while others hear nothing at all.
Even those on the low end of profound hearing loss could have trouble hearing anything in
a loud nightclub.
Others are unable to hear anything at all, regardless of the volume.
This is by far the rarest form of hearing loss, with roughly 0.2% of Americans being
unable to hear anything out of both ears.
Until recently, profound hearing loss wasn't very treatable.
Those with this type of hearing loss depended on sign language and/or lip-reading to get
by.
There have, however, been some exciting improvements in hearing aid technology recently, to the
point where some individuals who are otherwise completely deaf, are able to hear with the
help of advanced hearing aids.
There are some heart-wrenching videos of this on YouTube.
They're a great watch, but definitely do so in private, where you won't be embarrassed
when you become a sobbing mess.
Thank you for watching Life’s Biggest Questions, I hope this was interesting and informative,
and maybe even inspired you to look into it further on your own.
If you liked this video, please thumbs up and subscribe to the channel down below.
While you’re down there, let me know if you would rather be blind, or deaf.
And if you still have more science questions, definitely check out the Biggest Science Questions
playlist on the channel.
Until next time, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey with Life’s Biggest Questions, wishing you
the best of luck, on your quest for answers.