jayparkinsonmd: mikehudack: jamesnord:

This question first came to me when I realized it is impossible (at least for me) to read without hearing the words in my head.  So, if are deaf, what happens in your head while you read?  More importantly, can you think without language?

After some research I found what you might assume, no you cannot think without language.  In this way, being deaf can be MORE debilitating to development than blindness because of the lack of language.

This is where American Sign Language come in.  ASL is independent from english, with different sentence structure and syntax. It is more like Chinese than english, where a single sign can convey an entire word or phrase.  But, the differences between visual and spoken languages are much greater than that of English and Chinese. Because of this, a deaf individuals brain is organized differently than the rest of the population.

To make a long story short, you think and read in the language that you know, so in most deaf people cases that is sign language.

I assume this must be true if Jay Parkinson, M.D., is reblogging it.