HEARING BY TOUCH

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1779, 6 July 1926, Page 7

HEARING BY TOUCH

VIBRATIONS OF SPEECH. Fifty years ago Alexander Graham Bell, seeking a means by which the human voice could reach the ears of the ideaf, found as a by-product of his experiments an instrument —the telephone. To-day, using the Bell telephonic principle, Dr Robert H. Gault, professor of psychol gy at the North Western University, predicts a means of communicating vibrations of ispeech to the skin in such a way that words may be felt, not heard (says ithe Washington correspondent of the Glasgow Herald). The vibrations, according to Dr Gault, are felt so distinctly that with 'practice they may be distinguished and put together into and continued discourse. Ultimately he believes it may be possible for deaf persons to ■enjoy music by its “feel,” and poetry as it is read to itheir skin, if he can continue his experiments. Dr Gault, it is explained, has found that the deaf lip reader is enormously helped in the art of interpreting speech if he can simultaneously see a speaker’s face, and feel his words by applying a finger ifo an instrument that vibrates with the speaker’s voice. This is because many differences among words can be felt while they cannot be seen upon the lips and face of the one who is utering them. But not only so, for the rhythm and emphasis and (the accent and tempo of speech can be felt but not seen, and rhythm and emphasis and the rest help hearing people to understand. In the same way they will help deaf people to understand. These factors in the psychology of speech and hearing, whten brought to the deaf through their sense of touch, are making them able to enjoy speech,-to enjoy poetry also as it is read to their skin. This has hitherto been a closed book to ithose who have no hearing. Ultimately they should obtain the same pleasure from silently reading verse than others gain. The entire experiment requires special devices that are being developed by the Bell telephone 'laboratories according to Dr. Gault’s id.eas. There, may yet be a time when the deaf will prick up their skin as ordinary people do their ears.