BLIND people can pick out the meaning of a spoken sentence more quickly than
sighted folks, researchers in Germany and the US have found. The finding adds
weight to the notion that blind people can hear better than others, their
hearing compensating for the loss of their sight.
“They process language faster than sighted people,” says Brigitte Röder
from the University of Marburg, Germany, who discovered the effect with her
colleagues at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She says it may explain why
some blind people are so fast at “reading” books recorded onto tape. “I have a…
