People who have always been blind or have gone blind when they were a child are called “early blind” people, and their ability to make up for their lifelong obstacle is incredible. It’s always been known that blindness causes people to be able to hear more clearly, but there are numerous tests to prove that “early blind” people have more ability with almost every task than people with “late blindness” and especially those that are sighted but blindfolded. It makes sense that those who go blind so early in life have a lot more time to learn to make up for their lack of sight, and therefore are more skilled than those who have not learned or have had less time to learn. But how much more skilled are they with using their remaining four senses?

Scientists conducted a hearing experiment  which involved 3 groups of people: “early blind”, “late blind”, and sighted. The task, easier said than done, was to decipher which of  two tones played out loud was in higher pitch. As we can imagine, the “early” blind” people were able to outperform both of the other two groups. But interestingly, there was no significant difference in the performance of “late blind” and sighted people. This proved to Dr. Belin that the brain’s centers for sight and hearing and other senses are all connected in a way that if one dies, the others can make up for it. Therefore, the “early blind” has had more time for those other senses to step up to make up for the loss of sight. I think that instead of only having early and late blind people as volunteers to the experiment, it would be much more beneficial to our level of knowledge on the subject if there was a more varied selection of people’s experience with blindness. For example, having a “5 year blind” and a “10 year blind” to teach us about just how long the process of making of for lost senses takes.

Another experiment involved the same types of 3 groups, but this time tested the volunteers’ ability with their sense of touch. They were timed how fast each group could match 10 shapes with corresponding cut-out holes in a wooden board. This time, the two blind groups performed with similar performance, as the sighted volunteers struggled, yet improved a lot throughout the experiment. Just as in the other mentioned experiment involving 3 very different groups, I would have found it helpful to our understanding if there were more that 3 groups with people of less varied experience with blindness.

All of this evidence points to the fact that it is all about practice when it comes to improving everyday skills with the tall obstacle of living with blindness. Those that have been blind for longer have, in a way, an unfair advantage to the “late blind” because their connections of the sight, hearing, and touch centers of the brain have had much more time and adjust and make up for the devastating loss.