Most deaf people, especially those deaf from birth, don't subvocalize when they read. They can't associate sounds with words like hearing people. So instead, they rely on associating words with images or their equivalent in American Sign Language (ASL) to comprehend them.
Most hearing people experience their own voice in a silent way when thinking, which is also called “internal monologue”. Similarly, most Deaf people see pictures, ASL signs, or sometimes printed words. They see or feel their “inner signing”.
Many people who are profoundly deaf can still hear planes, dogs barking, etc. Hearing a sound does not mean that Deaf people can understand speech. A person with a significant hearing loss generally has difficulty or inability to hear speech even when aided.
Most children with severe hearing loss struggle with learning how to read. Often times, they do not read better than the elementary school level upon high school graduation. However, many children who are deaf or hard of hearing are great readers.
Completely deaf people do not have an inner voice, at least in the way hearing people do. This is especially true for those born deaf or those who lost their hearing ability at a young age. For this category of people, their inner thoughts appear in the language they communicate in, typically a sign language like ASL.
It is possible that deaf people dream in a way that is similar to how they experience the world when they are awake. Yes, a deaf person can hear in their dreams. Dreams are a manifestation of the subconscious mind and deaf people often experience sound-based dreams.
Primarily though, most completely deaf people think in sign language. Similar to how an “inner voice” of a hearing person is experienced in one's own voice, a completely deaf person sees or, more aptly, feels themselves signing in their head as they “talk” in their heads.
Deaf people learn to read by chaining. Chaining involves associating images and signs with words. Instead of having silent speech like hearing people, teachers point at words and do the sign or point at its image to help a deaf student assign the sign or image to that word.
Specially-designed alarm clocks for people who have hearing loss come in many forms, including those that have built-in strobe lights or bed-shakers and those that have an outlet where you can plug in a vibrating alert, or a lamp to wake you up each morning.
Thus, a majority of deaf children (and deaf adults) are not able to get much meaning from print. However, some profoundly deaf individuals do learn to read, and are as proficient at reading as their normally hearing peers.
Deaf people often work incredibly hard to moderate their speech so that non-deaf people can understand them, having put all of that hard work in, being told to be quiet feels like a kick in the teeth (or should we say ears?). We're deaf. No we can't automatically know exactly how loudly is speaking.
Some children develop one when learning speech and eventually grow out of it. Others have a lisp as a result of structural irregularities within their mouth. Hearing loss can contribute to a lisp because of their inability to hear sounds and imitate them properly.
Emergencies and 911
People who are deaf, deafblind or hard of hearing may text 911 or call 911 using their preferred form of phone communication (including voice, TTY, video relay, caption relay, or real-time text). If you do text 911 in an emergency, be aware that 911 dispatchers will ask you if they can call you.
Hearing-impaired (also referred to as deaf) people think in terms of their “inner voice”. Some of them think in ASL (American Sign Language), while others think in the vocal language they learned, with their brains coming up with how the vocal language sounds.
As a result, deaf readers can go through a text somewhat faster than hearing readers while achieving the same level of comprehension. In sum, learning to read poses particular challenges for deaf individuals, but they also bring special skills to the task that can give them an advantage.
Sign language is a completely different language to spoken English and mouth movements used in line with sign language help emphasise particular words or prevent any misunderstanding, as some signs can have multiple meanings.
In another study (2), Deaf participants reported a higher rate of nightmares and lucid dreams. Those are considered as intense and vivid dream experiences. Furthermore, taste, smell, pain, temperature, hope, anger, fear, and tense feelings were reported more often by Deaf participants.
Similarly, visual alert devices can use flashing lights to let people who are deaf or hard of hearing know when someone is at the door. The devices can connect to a doorbell or use a vibration sensor to determine when someone is knocking on the door.
For a deaf person who doesn't have hearing, their speech might be described as having a monotone nature. Being unable to hear exactly what normal speech sounds like, despite intensive speech therapy, means growing up without learning natural inflections in speech.
Sound and Vibration: a Deaf experience
Hearing people tend to view Deaf people as silent and their language as silent. They imagine that when Deaf people don't hear, there is silence. That's not truly the case.
“Deaf accent” occurs because deaf people are often unable to hear the full range of sounds that hearing people hear. This means that they are not always able to replicate the full range of sounds in spoken words.
Because written language learning is typically linked to hearing and producing language, a student who is deaf has an added barrier to learning written English (see The relationship between literacy and ASL).
Can a deaf person hear their heartbeat? Nobody can hear their own heartbeat without something like a stethoscope, which wouldn't work for a totally deaf person. When you think you're hearing your heartbeat, you're actually just feeling it.
However, the human body can transmit musical sounds to the brain when vibrations are applied to the skin. In other words, we can feel music. Our research has identified a safe way for deaf people to hear musical notes through the skin of their hands and feet.
Musicians with hearing loss often use the vibration of their instrument, or the surface to which it is connected, to help them feel the sound that they create, so although they may not be able to hear, d/Deaf people can use the vibrations caused by musical sounds to help them 'listen' to music.