In what language do deaf people think?

My aunt was a deaf-mute (That's what she called herself. I have no idea if the term is pejorative) Her husband, my uncle, was blind. So she would sign things that he couldn't see, and he would yell at her and she couldn't hear them.<p>Made for a great marriage.<p>(Joking aside, it was really interesting to watch them communicate. He would hold her hands while she "spoke" Then she would hold his hands -- so he knew she was there -- while he spoke back to her. Worked very well, actually. They had two beautiful kids that grew up to become advocates and workers in the hearing and sight-impaired communities)<p>It was an amazing family. As I recall, both had jobs outside the home. Both were avid readers, writers, and participated in several civic organizations. I used to love visiting them as a kid.

Communities evolve language spontaneously. Evidence of this is a school of deaf children (in Brazil IIRC) who were not taught sign language (due to lack of a teacher, due to budget). They developed their own, which became quite complex and of comparable sophistication to other human languages.<p>Taken with the conclusion of the submission that abstract thought requires language for its development, this leads us to the conclusion that abstract thought - far from an isolated activity - is a consequence of community.<p>It seems to me that it would be possible to develop abstract thought in isolation, but perhaps it would take a genius, in the same way that some mathematicians have developed mathematics in isolation, and it's just that it helps tremendously to have the cultural foundation to stand on. eg. I find it much easier to visualize abstraction, reference and so on, than to say it.

&#62;He met a woman in her 90s who would sometimes slip into a reverie, her hands moving constantly. According to her daughter, she was thinking in Sign.<p>It sounds to me like she was thinking out loud, or 'talking' to herself. Thinking would correspond to <i>imagining</i> her hands moving, presumably in far more detail then the rest of us can render internally. Except perhaps for some master craftspeople who use their hands professionally.<p>For example, a few pianists can learn a piece from reading the score alone, away from the keyboard.

&#62; Your speculations raise a larger question: Can you think without language? Answer: Nope, at least not at the level humans are accustomed to.<p>Wait, I have a question: by thinking in language, does this mean, that, it's very common for people (in the English speaking world) to think like there was a background voice speaking in your head, like the thinking bubble scenes depicted in movies and sitcoms?<p>As a Chinese, now I can think in languages (dual thinking in Mandarin and English), but in the school days I have developed a totally different, alternative way of thinking process.<p>All Indo-European languages have alphabet to represent syllables, but <i>Chinese is not a language</i> (Mandarin, Cantonese are languages), it's a distinctively unique writing system. Why unique? Its logograms/logographs are not directly linked with phonemes but linked with the <i>meaning</i> itself.<p>When I do thinking and reasoning, I recall a concept by the word's exact character shape and structure, then match with the picture of book pages I memorized, identify the corresponding semantics and then organize my result. This is <i>way</i> faster than thinking in languages like a background voice speaking in my head.<p>Elementary education in China has a technique called 默读, which means read without speaking, after we learned this, later we were taught to get rid of "read" altogether. We only scan the picture of one book page, and cache it as a static picture, then a question is raised about a particular word appeared in that page. We are demanded to recite the context out. This is called memorize-before-comprehend. After decades of training and harsh tests like this, we were totally used to treat thinking as pattern extracting from lines of sentences.<p>This is why Chinese find English grammar funny, a noun is a noun, it should be a static notation of things, easily recognizable universally, why the hell do people invent stuff like plural form to make obstacles for <i>recognizing</i>?<p>Human voices spectrum are way smaller than visual spectrum. And our brain is faster and more optimized at processing mass volume visual stuff(especially pattern recognition), does anyone else think in pictures?<p>Update 1: Anther reason why Chinese are soooooo obsessed with calligraphy. If some idea is really important we write it in an unforgettable, various artful way so the pattern extracting is even faster. And the calligraphy details contains rich hints and link to related ideas.<p>Update 2: Found out deaf people also have problems with English grammar, similar to the common mistakes Chinese makes <a href="http://www.reddit.com/comments/bgasc/_/c0mmn2l" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/comments/bgasc/_/c0mmn2l</a>

Straight Dope's answers are often quite illuminating but on this one they've really dropped the ball. First, consider the statement "I think in English, because that's what I speak." This is an extremely naive view of, what is to linguists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, etc., a huge enigma, or actually two:<p>1. Is our thought process based on language, i.e. does it use syntactical transformations that are characteristics of language. Note that introspective evidence immediately reveals that at least part of our thinking are in images. This type of thinking is clearly now linguistic. So, let's limit the question to the other modes of thinking, e.g. reasoning.<p>2. If the answer to (1) is affirmative, then in what language do we think? Is it our native language? What if we have two native language? What happens for deaf people? If we think in our native tongue, then how strong an influence does it exert on our thought process (i.e. was Whorf right?)<p>AFAIK, (1) is now accepted by most philosophy of language people. (2), however, is a matter of some debate. Some people, like Fodor, claim that we think in an innate language. This position is hard to defend for various reasons. With the recent rise of linguistic relativism (suppressed for about thirty years by Chomsky and his followers) more and more researchers are delving into the question of language of thought and the effect it has on our cognitive processes.<p>For an excellent introductory survey on the philosophical issues, see Murat Aydede's article (<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/" rel="nofollow">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/</a>). If your cup of tea is more along the lines of cognitive psychology/linguistics, check out Lera Broditsky's work (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lera_Boroditsky" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lera_Boroditsky</a>)

As a child I started thinking on images and pictures than on words and I had the impression for a long while that everyone does the same. Though I never had any issue with my thinking or hearing or talking, I comparatively had slow speed at putting those thoughts into words. Or in otherwords, my thinking speed exceeded my talking speed. 2 points to mention - 1. Either that speed difference is the reason why my brain developed a different interface for thinking in terms of images and pictures than on words. 2. Or maybe because my brain used images first hand and that’s why my talking speed became slow (since visual network is comparatively faster than words). [A brain scan should tell you the difference]<p>Either way, I just said this to explain that our brain just needs a medium to think or if explained in terms of semantics - a medium to develop the semantic net. The voice that you have in your head is not something with which you are born. It’s something that’s being developed. It’s the same that happens with anyone with a hearing/speaking impairment that the brain will develop a different interface for them to think. For example, most people with autism probably will have a different thinking medium. Not sure if I can say it this way - but I felt that the brain uses ‘its own language’ to develop its thinking ability based on how you are.

Do people generally think in their spoken language? I mean sure I think in English, but not all the time. If I'm doing some serious, deep thinking, my thoughts tend to escape words and just become thoughts (hard to explain). I always assumed that's how everyone thinks.

To the people who claim that thinking happens in some language or other: how about what's going through your head when you play chess? Is that not thinking by your definition? Or do you really narrate it to yourself, as if you were writing a commentary of the game?

I've mentioned this here before but when formally learning German language for the first time I'd often recall BSL signs (or French words equally) instead of the correct <i>Deutsch</i> word. This indicates to me that the same internal token was indexing all my foreign language words including the signs.<p>Occasionally I'll think with a sign just as occasionally I'll drop in a foreign language word into internal speech.<p>My youngest at 16mo is getting quite a few signs now (and has a couple of recognisable utterances - "dake" (his bro's name in modified form), "what-this", "cheers"(!)). He's pre-vocal but he can express quite a few things and he can attempt to manipulate us using mock cries. This last point to me means he's thinking about what he wants to acquire (chocolate, ice-cream, whatever someone else is eating!). He also makes responses to signals that he's going to defecate and asks for his potty (sometimes, he's just managing to do this now) - again this seems to be relatively complex thought.<p>It would be interesting to me to see if his brain pattern indicates, to those doing the research, a pattern similar to a sign language user or not?

"Research suggests that the brain of a native deaf signer is organized differently from that of a hearing person."<p>That's trivial. It just means "the mind is a structure inplemented in the brain, so any change in the mind translates into some change in the brain".

When we are first born, we experience a barrage of new sensations. Our minds automatically integrate this sensory information as perceptual information of the world around us. As we grow older, we begin to form our first abstract concepts of the world in terms of visual images.<p>Humans cannot communicate in concepts, however, and we need a perceptual language (optimally one that we can both see and hear) to do so. Not only does this enable us to communicate ideas and concepts to others, but it also serves as a kind of storage system for the mind, making learning and the formation of complex thoughts much easier.<p>It is generally easier to think in terms of language than abstracts, because language is simply the concrete form of conceptual information.<p>Because deaf people can only visually, not audibly, perceive their language, they are obviously set back in terms of their ability to learn and think audibly. However, because they can still use sign language and understand written language, I would not expect their learning or thinking ability to be lessened by any significant degree.

Wow that is mind-blowing. I could not possibly imagine a world without words, especially the ones in my head. It goes against every intuition I have to believe in thought that lacks language.

Why do you need language to think? Isn't brain enough?

So isn't that like thinking in text?

I've also often wondered if the language one thinks in has any effect on cognition or the "efficiency" of thought (if that even makes sense).

Lisp