krept
05-26-2005, 04:16 PM
Was thinking about how blind people experience dreaming and did a little digging. Found an interesting study here:
http://mind.ucsc.edu/dreams/Articles/hurovitz_1999a.html
Some interesting points/excerpts:
1) There are no visual images in the dreams of those born without any ability to experience visual imagery in waking life.
2) Individuals who become blind before the age of five seldom experience visual imagery in their dreams, although Deutsch (1928) reports some visual imagery in six schoolchildren who lost their sight before age five.
3) Those who become sightless between the ages of five and seven may or may not retain some visual imagery.
4) Most people who lost their vision after age seven continue to experience at least some visual imagery, although its frequency and clarity often fade with time.
For participant 14, the 45-year-old male totally blind since age 28, 22 of his 34 sensory references (65%) were in the taste/smell/touch category, as compared to the 9% for visual references reported earlier. The sensations in such dreams were very strong. The participants "felt" the warmth of the sun, the texture of a coat, the edge of a knife, the slope of the ground, vibrations, snow, or the soft fur of a dog. They "smelled" fire, tobacco, aftershave lotion, fresh air, food, or coffee. They noted the "taste" of a cigar, a cup of coffee, or an orange. These dream sensations seemed to reflect their use of or pleasure in these sense modalities in waking life.
Hall's (1948) unpublished interviews with the 18-year-old blind student concerning her sense of objects in her dreams may provide evidence for the close connection between vision and touch. In talking about a dream in which she was sitting around a table with her family in a very nice restaurant, she reported that "I knew we were at a table by kinesthetic sense and knew it was a nice place by auditory sense (thick carpets, quiet atmosphere, etc.)." Then she went on to explain: "I have a picture of a table because I know what a table felt like, not because I have seen one" (Hall, 1948, p. 3).
In another dream she described a beautiful table with two big silver candelabras on it. When asked how she knew the candelabras were silver, she replied it was because they were "very smooth to touch." When the interviewer asked her if she had noticed that she seemed to have a "preference for smooth things," she replied, "well naturally, because it's prettier to touch," thereby applying a highly visual term, "pretty," to something she likes on the basis of touch. She continued this line of thought by saying that "I think if anyone prefers rough textures it's because they are seeing them besides feeling them and the material might look pretty to them" (Hall, 1948, p. 21).
In some cases, the blind test subjects said they were "seeing" things but upon further investigation, the observers felt that there might be some confusion as to whether or not the term is appropriate, as in here:
Participant 15, a 46-year-old man, had an ambiguous visual reference in a dream based on a recent experience. It concerned his arrival at a maternity hospital to "see" his first grandchild. "Just like in real life," he reported, "we received the phone call, left the house, going down there, walking into the room and seeing the baby, holding the baby, it was a wonderful experience." As with participant 5, this visual reference seems to be metaphoric in nature, employing a frequently used conceptual metaphor in which "knowing" or "experiencing" is "seeing"
http://mind.ucsc.edu/dreams/Articles/hurovitz_1999a.html
Some interesting points/excerpts:
1) There are no visual images in the dreams of those born without any ability to experience visual imagery in waking life.
2) Individuals who become blind before the age of five seldom experience visual imagery in their dreams, although Deutsch (1928) reports some visual imagery in six schoolchildren who lost their sight before age five.
3) Those who become sightless between the ages of five and seven may or may not retain some visual imagery.
4) Most people who lost their vision after age seven continue to experience at least some visual imagery, although its frequency and clarity often fade with time.
For participant 14, the 45-year-old male totally blind since age 28, 22 of his 34 sensory references (65%) were in the taste/smell/touch category, as compared to the 9% for visual references reported earlier. The sensations in such dreams were very strong. The participants "felt" the warmth of the sun, the texture of a coat, the edge of a knife, the slope of the ground, vibrations, snow, or the soft fur of a dog. They "smelled" fire, tobacco, aftershave lotion, fresh air, food, or coffee. They noted the "taste" of a cigar, a cup of coffee, or an orange. These dream sensations seemed to reflect their use of or pleasure in these sense modalities in waking life.
Hall's (1948) unpublished interviews with the 18-year-old blind student concerning her sense of objects in her dreams may provide evidence for the close connection between vision and touch. In talking about a dream in which she was sitting around a table with her family in a very nice restaurant, she reported that "I knew we were at a table by kinesthetic sense and knew it was a nice place by auditory sense (thick carpets, quiet atmosphere, etc.)." Then she went on to explain: "I have a picture of a table because I know what a table felt like, not because I have seen one" (Hall, 1948, p. 3).
In another dream she described a beautiful table with two big silver candelabras on it. When asked how she knew the candelabras were silver, she replied it was because they were "very smooth to touch." When the interviewer asked her if she had noticed that she seemed to have a "preference for smooth things," she replied, "well naturally, because it's prettier to touch," thereby applying a highly visual term, "pretty," to something she likes on the basis of touch. She continued this line of thought by saying that "I think if anyone prefers rough textures it's because they are seeing them besides feeling them and the material might look pretty to them" (Hall, 1948, p. 21).
In some cases, the blind test subjects said they were "seeing" things but upon further investigation, the observers felt that there might be some confusion as to whether or not the term is appropriate, as in here:
Participant 15, a 46-year-old man, had an ambiguous visual reference in a dream based on a recent experience. It concerned his arrival at a maternity hospital to "see" his first grandchild. "Just like in real life," he reported, "we received the phone call, left the house, going down there, walking into the room and seeing the baby, holding the baby, it was a wonderful experience." As with participant 5, this visual reference seems to be metaphoric in nature, employing a frequently used conceptual metaphor in which "knowing" or "experiencing" is "seeing"