If someone says pass the ‘cheese', what are they saying?
They're saying: Pass the cheese, right? Except that's not the way some kids hear it.
They hear pass the grease. Or pass the peas. Or pass the fees.
And in many cases these kids don't even hear a word in English. Or Japanese. Or French. All they hear is a mushy sound.
And since all early development is sound based, these kids get off to a lousy start.
While all the kids around them are called smart, and intelligent, these kids are called dumb and slow. And amazingly, it has little to do with brain processing and a heck of a lot to do with hearing.
In his studies, eminent scientist Michael Merzenich proved time and time again, that if you could improve the sound for these kids, you could see a dramatic change in their learning.
And it all starts with the critical period of learning
This is when the brain is setting up basic processing machinery. And it doesn’t take learning per se, to drive the initial differentiation of the machinery of the brain.
All it takes, for example in the sound domain, is exposure to sound. And the brain is at the mercy of the sound environment. So for example you could rear an animal in an environment in which there is meaningless sound. And what you find is that the animal’s brain sets up the sound as kinda important. The sound doesn’t have to be valuable to the animal. And the brain quickly sets up a processor that’s specialised to listen in to those sounds.
When the sounds are useful, they create a language processor in our brain.
When they’re not they create defective processing. And this defective processing leads to a bit of ‘defective hearing’.
But what about normal kids? What's wrong with their hearing?
There's a little girl who lives not far away from my house. One day, when I was visiting, she said: “I have bad handwriting.”
I was stunned. Kids barely learn to write at the age of four and five. How come a four year old knew that her handwriting was bad?
And how could she compare good with bad when she's barely able to work out the letters herself?
The answer lies in the hearing, doesn't it?
Her mother has been telling her that she's got bad handwriting.
Her mother then reinforces that myth by pointing out that the kid's grandparents both have bad handwriting.
And so purely by sound, the kid's handwriting worsens. The more the sound of ‘you have bad handwriting' enters her ears, the more her brain processes the information as true.
Most kids aren't slow. They have a hearing problem. Sometimes the hearing problem can be fixed by removing the fluid that's impeding sound waves from correctly registering on the brain. Some times the problem can be fixed far more quickly by just getting the parents to stop talking nonsense.
The problem doesn’t stop at kids
Even though adult brains are extremely plastic and can learn quite easily, what I’ve found is that when learning a new skill, adult brains go through a ‘critical period’. In this critical period their brain either hears sounds that create a language processor for learning that particular skill, or it’s confused with the random or negative sounds so that the language processor simply recognises noise.
What this boils down to is the obvious conclusion
Talent is but a language. Your brain is a language processing unit. If the brain hears noise, or has obstructions that prevent it from hearing the right words or structure, it will not be able to develop that talent.
This becomes even more critical when you’re a teacher, consultant, parent or guide. You are the noise maker. You are the problem. You are the person who’s consistently telling kids that they can be talented at this and not talented at that.
Your brain is plastic. Stop believing in the limitation of talent.
Improve your hearing instead. And that in turn will improve your learning skills and the learning skills of those you come in contact with every single day.
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Thanks for this Sean.
My daughter has this. She has been semi-deaf for 4 years (she’s 7) but it was only fixed a couple of years ago.
People don’t understand that she can’t hear well, even when the ears are fixed. Her brain simply has learned not to trust her ears. She developed a ‘defective hearing brain’.
But that doesn’t define her. She’s doing great!
Kind regards,
Erwin.
Her brain will learn to trust her ears over time. The brain shuts off receptors after a certain time. My wife had a finger amputated, and was in a sling for about 3 months. Just three months later, she couldn’t so much as lift an empty glass. Well, the brain has to be taught all over again. And today almost three years later, the finger is not quite up to 100%, but it took a lot time and lots of “threats” from the physiotherapist, before Renuka would allow her brain to recognise that finger again.
Wow, so I interesting I had to retweet. I had never thought of hearing in those two distinct ways. It’s interesting that the brain will relearn–this must be because it “wants” to? I mean, the brain is better off if the body parts (ears, finger) are functioning as it tells them too, right?
You write the most interesting posts, Sean, and I always look forward to reading your work when I see it land in my inbox!
The brain doesn’t always ‘want to’ re-learn. But it does want to run as efficiently as possible. This is why when someone loses their sight, their hearing gets hugely accentuated. The brain is just striking a balance, as it were.
A lot of myths centered around the brain being hardwired, but now it’s possible to see a dramatic change in memory etc even with old folks or people who were considered ‘slow.’ The questions are changing. Instead of saying : How can we give these people pills and get them out of the way, the question is now: How can we use the brain’s innate ability to get them to learn or in many cases, re-learn.
Sean, It’s so true regarding brain plasticity. I wrote some copy for a client selling a device that helps people with brain disorders like Parkinson’s Disease and MS to rewire their brain so they can regain their balance and walk better and more safely.
It works by stimulating your brain to teach itself how to walk again using new nerve pathways, in effect bypassing the old damaged nerve pathways and building new ones.
The success rate is very high, and with people who thought they would never walk without a walker or cane again.
Neuroplasticity is a fascinating subject and of course only half the battle in the case of bad handwriting.
The messages parents send their kids have a lasting effect difficult to overcome if it’s the wrong message.
I’ve grown up with hearing loss (born with it) and i am now going to get hearing aids to fix it finally (after well over 10 years after they realized I had hearing loss (age 6) ) and I am utterly excited since a lot of things don’t make sense to me right now, and I have gotten into a bad habit of smiling and/or nodding at someone when I had no idea of what they were talking about. Most of my family tend to joke that my sense of smell and Kinesthesia (precise awareness of muscle and joint movement). Can’t wait to actually be able to hear for once in my life instead of people just thinking I’m slow or stupid.