Exploring the perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations in deaf people Export

@article{Atkinson07, abstract = {<i>Introduction</i>. Previous research has not taken account of the possibility that deaf people will show greater heterogeneity in how they experience voice-hallucinations due to individual differences in experience with language and residual hearing. This study aims to explore how deaf participants perceive voice-hallucinations and whether the perceptual characteristics reported reflect individual experience with language and sensory input. <i>Method</i>. A statement-sorting task generated data about perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations for exploratory factor analysis. The sample included 27 deaf participants with experience of voice-hallucinations, and a range of hearing loss and language backgrounds. <i>Results</i>. Perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations map closely onto individual auditory experience. People born profoundly deaf loaded onto nonauditory factors. Deaf people with experience of hearing speech, through residual hearing, hearing aids, or predeafness experience, reported auditory features or uncertainty about mode of perception. <i>Conclusions</i>. This is the first study to systematically explore voice-hallucinations in deaf people and to advance a model of subvocal articulation to account for such counterintuitive phenomena.}, author = {Atkinson, Joanna R. and Gleeson, Kate and Cromwell, Jim and O'Rourke, Sue}, citeulike-article-id = {4922128}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13546800701238229}, comment = {Presents experiment where deaf people who 'hear voices', with range of histories (e.g. born profoundly deaf/partially deaf) are surveyed to characterise their voice hearing experience. Found the nature and duration of their deafness had great impact on the experience. Focusing on "Factor A", those profoundly deaf from birth (or before language development): Those with prelingual deafness or profoundly deaf from birth heard non-auditory, clear and easy to understand. They considered questions of pitch, volume and loudness irrelevant to their experiences, but nonetheless associated gender and identity to the voice. Apart from one subject (who saw God's moustache), images of the voice seen appeared to be subvisual in nature, distinct from true visual hallucinations. Otherwise, usually only the language articulators (i.e. hands and lips) were seen, generally moving, faint and unclear, and not interfering with normal vision. The subjects found it difficult to give qualitative descriptions of the imagery (e.g b+w / colour), one account: "All my voices sign to me, deaf school kids and the pope, even though he is hearing. I am not sure how I can communicate but voice is projected into my brain, it moves in my thoughts . . . hands and lips move and glow in my mind. It's blurry but I understand it like daydreaming or watching a film . . . like a ghost with a camera in my head. (translated from BSL)" The subjects in this group reported they could see subvisual imagery, but did not perceive the voice as being located in front of them, more widely believed to originate inside the head than outside. The voice was not perceived as physically sensual in terms of hearing or sight, but rather subjects "just knew" what they were saying and that they might be understood via telepathy. This study provides compelling evidence supporting articulatory based models of thought: "It is likely that deaf people's thought processes, like those of hearing people, are based primarily on an articulatory code which remains largely preconscious and closed to introspection. It is possible that thoughts encoded in terms of premotor articulations enter explicit awareness during voice-hallucinations, leading to the perception of articulatory percepts, which are interpreted as alien to the self. These ''voices'' usually take an auditory-verbal form in hearing individuals because the brain associates speech articulations with audible speech (McDonald \& McGurk, 1978)." }, doi = {10.1080/13546800701238229}, journal = {Cognitive Neuropsychiatry}, keywords = {deafness, language, sign-language, voices}, number = {4}, pages = {339--361}, posted-at = {2009-06-22 12:04:21}, priority = {0}, publisher = {Psychology Press}, title = {Exploring the perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations in deaf people}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13546800701238229}, volume = {12}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - Atkinson07 L3 - citeulike-article-id:4922128 N2 - <i>Introduction</i>. Previous research has not taken account of the possibility that deaf people will show greater heterogeneity in how they experience voice-hallucinations due to individual differences in experience with language and residual hearing. This study aims to explore how deaf participants perceive voice-hallucinations and whether the perceptual characteristics reported reflect individual experience with language and sensory input. <i>Method</i>. A statement-sorting task generated data about perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations for exploratory factor analysis. The sample included 27 deaf participants with experience of voice-hallucinations, and a range of hearing loss and language backgrounds. <i>Results</i>. Perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations map closely onto individual auditory experience. People born profoundly deaf loaded onto nonauditory factors. Deaf people with experience of hearing speech, through residual hearing, hearing aids, or predeafness experience, reported auditory features or uncertainty about mode of perception. <i>Conclusions</i>. This is the first study to systematically explore voice-hallucinations in deaf people and to advance a model of subvocal articulation to account for such counterintuitive phenomena. IS - 4 JF - Cognitive Neuropsychiatry EP - 361 TI - Exploring the perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations in deaf people PB - Psychology Press VL - 12 SP - 339 KW - deafness KW - language KW - sign-language KW - voices N1 - Presents experiment where deaf people who 'hear voices', with range of histories (e.g. born profoundly deaf/partially deaf) are surveyed to characterise their voice hearing experience. Found the nature and duration of their deafness had great impact on the experience. Focusing on "Factor A", those profoundly deaf from birth (or before language development): Those with prelingual deafness or profoundly deaf from birth heard non-auditory, clear and easy to understand. They considered questions of pitch, volume and loudness irrelevant to their experiences, but nonetheless associated gender and identity to the voice. Apart from one subject (who saw God's moustache), images of the voice seen appeared to be subvisual in nature, distinct from true visual hallucinations. Otherwise, usually only the language articulators (i.e. hands and lips) were seen, generally moving, faint and unclear, and not interfering with normal vision. The subjects found it difficult to give qualitative descriptions of the imagery (e.g b+w / colour), one account: "All my voices sign to me, deaf school kids and the pope, even though he is hearing. I am not sure how I can communicate but voice is projected into my brain, it moves in my thoughts . . . hands and lips move and glow in my mind. It’s blurry but I understand it like daydreaming or watching a film . . . like a ghost with a camera in my head. (translated from BSL)" The subjects in this group reported they could see subvisual imagery, but did not perceive the voice as being located in front of them, more widely believed to originate inside the head than outside. The voice was not perceived as physically sensual in terms of hearing or sight, but rather subjects "just knew" what they were saying and that they might be understood via telepathy. This study provides compelling evidence supporting articulatory based models of thought: "It is likely that deaf people’s thought processes, like those of hearing people, are based primarily on an articulatory code which remains largely preconscious and closed to introspection. It is possible that thoughts encoded in terms of premotor articulations enter explicit awareness during voice-hallucinations, leading to the perception of articulatory percepts, which are interpreted as alien to the self. These ‘‘voices’’ usually take an auditory-verbal form in hearing individuals because the brain associates speech articulations with audible speech (McDonald & McGurk, 1978)." AU - Atkinson, Joanna AU - Gleeson, Kate AU - Cromwell, Jim AU - O'Rourke, Sue PY - 2007/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13546800701238229 ER -