Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month CALLING ALL CALENDER ENTRIES This is our final call for entries to be included in the Art Beyond Sight Calendar! Send us your organizations name, event date, time, location, and contact if pre-registration is required. The calendar is available on our website: artbeyondsight.org/change/aw-calendar.shtml. October 2013 Email Alert 3 Promoting Access to the Arts for All Building an Inclusive Society ECHOLOCATION seeing with sound Written By Amanda Treco Personally, I would never ride a bike in New York City traffic, but some people will not be so easily deterred. Daniel Kish confidently swerves through city streets with ease. This is even more intriguing because Kish was born blind. Today, he has the ability to avoid traffic, hike and bike through the mountains and play various sports without the help of any tradition aids or devices for the visually impaired or blind. Kish, the Executive Director of World Access for the Blind. taught himself to see using palate clicks when he was still a young child. This is called echolocation. Kish has taught others, both old and young, this technique and has often been successful. It might sounds outlandish that humans can learn to see with their ears just like bats, whales, dolphins or shrews, but most humans blind or sighted, can actually learn the echolocation technique to sense objects in their surroundings by using echoes produced by palate clicks. Training can begin in childhood, through the use of games to improve sensitivity to sound. Researchers have found that training in echolocation can improve awareness and broaden spatial and perceptual horizons to include things that people never thought they had the ability to sense without sight. The Exotic Sensory Capabilities of Humans published by The Psychologist in 2013, describes how a skill as unusual as echolocation actually has, the very adaptive use to acclimate to changes in context and availability of perceptual information for a common function. The article, Human Echolocation: Blind And Sighted Persons Ability to Detect Sounds Recorded In The Presence Of A Reflecting Object published in Perception, discusses how people with sight tend to use light to build spatial conceptions, which is why it might be more difficult for people with sight to understand that spatial perception is based on the sounds in their environment. By clicking his or her tongue, a person can learn to identify objects and textures in their surroundings by using the echoes made from the clicks. Although humans dont have a hearing system as precise and specialized as bats do, there is still the potential to learn how to build spatial conceptions using echolocation. Dr. Thomas Stoffregen, a Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, describes the difference between bats and humans abilities in using echolocation by explaining how, low frequency sound provides less information about the shapes and sizes of things. High frequency sound (e.g., ultrasound) provides precise information about shape and size, but it does not travel very far; it is rapidly absorbed by the air. Its a trade-off. Bats sold the trade-off by, in effect, shouting really loud all the time. Blind people who use echolocation (humans cannot make or hear ultrasound) dont need to shout or tap as often as bats, but they cannot achieve the same level of perceptual precision. Since low frequency sounds travel around 300 meters per second, we manage to distinguish between the distances of sounds, even if we remain unaware of how we perceive this difference. Despite the fact that humans abilities are not quite as precise as a bat or dolphin, in Humans Can Learn to See With Sound, for National Geographic News, the scientist Juan Antonio Martínez states that even though there are echolocation devices such as flash sonar devices that can aid sight, the palate clicking technique is the most effective method of echolocation. The reasoning, according to Martínez is that such devices are worse than natural echolocation at present, because they dont reproduce the complete haptic [touch] perception of the echoes. The fact that humans who seemingly do not have access to all five of the commonly recognized senses actually have the capability to navigate through this world without relying on the help of technological devices is quite a liberating revelation. Humans can learn to see with their ears, just like bats, whales, dolphins or shrews... REFERENCES Ravilious, Kate. Humans Can Learn to See With Sound, Study Says. National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 6 July 2009. Web. 29 July 2013. Rosenblum, Lawrence D., and Michael S. Gordon. The Exotic Sensory Capabilities Of Humans. The Psychologist 25.12 (2012): 904-907. PsychINFO. Web. 29 July 2013. Schenkman, Bo N., and Mats E. Nilsson. Human Echolocation: Blind And Sighted Persons Ability to Detect Sounds Recorded In The Presence Of A Reflecting Object. Perception 39.4 (2010): 483-501. PsycINFO. Web. 29 July 2013. Speed of Sound. ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 17 Aug. 2013. INTERVIEW WITH DR. THOMAS STROFFREGEN Dr. Thomas Stoffregen is a Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota. He is interested in perception and action, human factors, control of posture and orientation, and ecological psychology. He has participated in research on echolocation. In his article, On Specification and the Senses in which he collaborated with a Professor of Human Movement Science, Benoît G. Bardy, Stoffregen challenges the assumption that perception is divided into separate domains of vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. I interviewed him to find out more about experiences and thoughts on the topic of echolocation. ABS: What does the work on action and perception, particularly intermodal perception, have to do with echolocation? DR. STOFFREGEN: Echolocation is a form of perception. When a blind person taps their long cane (that is what it is called, not a cane) on the ground, they are using action (arm movements) to improve their perception. Logically, echolocation is the same: when an animal generates sounds that bounce off the environment and return to the ear, the act of sound generation is being used to improve perception. Intermodal perception is more complex. Bats use echolocation while in flight. Body movement, such as flight, creates changes in perception. Think about walking; as you set your feet on the sidewalk, the soles of your feet are stimulated by that physical contact, and the force and timing of those sole pulses are related to how fast and hard your are walking. As the bat maneuvers, the wings beat, the body twists and turns--all these actions stimulate skin, joints, and the vestibular system (inner ear). If those systems are not stimulated, it means the bat is stationary. Echolocation provides information about *relative* motion; in the sound field, me moving toward bug is equal to bug moving toward me. Stimulation of the body (as described above) tells the bat whether (and how) it is moving. So, the intermodal relation between sound and feel allows the bat to know *who* is moving, which is pretty important. ABS: What do you think are the limitations of echolocation? DR. STOFFREGEN: Low frequency sound provides less information about the shapes and sizes of things. High frequency sound (e.g, ultrasound) provides precise information about shape and size, but it does not travel very far; it is rapidly absorbed by the air. Its a trade-off. Bats sole the trade-off by, in effect, shouting really loud all the time. Blind people who use echolocation (humans cannot make or hear ultrasound) dont need to shout/tap as often as bats, but they cannot achieve the same level of perceptual precision. ABS: Can you speculate on the potential of echolocation for the future? DR. STOFFREGEN: Several groups of researchers are working to develop echolocation-like systems for vehicles so that, for example, self-driving cars may be able to navigate, avoid collisions, etc. Other people are developing bat-like echolocation systems to aid the blind. Not all blind people use echolocation, and no humans can use ultrasound. So, a gizmo that generates ultrasound and can process the echoes could provide a useful navigation aid. Imagine, directed and written by Andrzej Jakimowski in 2012, starring Edward Hogg, Alexandra Maria Lara and Melchior Derouet centers around a blind teacher, Ian (Hogg), who breaks the rules by integrating the use of echolocation into his lessons to help his students learn to move with ease through their lives. This romantic drama is a must see, while also providing a unique and powerful illustration of how echolocation works. ART BEYOND SIGHT 589 Broadway New York, NY 10012 FILM ON ECHOLATION -Scanned by Exchange Hosted Services-
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 07:25:20 +0000
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