For this assignment, listen to the Prologue and Act 1 of the This American Life episode #464 called Invisible Made Visible. If you have a smartphone or tablet, the easiest way to listen to this, and all the other radio shows for the class, is to download the This American Life app. Once you have the app you can quickly find shows (by title or episode number) and listen right then and there. You can also go to the websitewww.thisamericanlife.org and search on episode number. I've found it for you here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/464/invisible-made-visible click on launch player and listen to the show.
Reflect on the experiences of the guy in the hotel room and with his daughter. What do these experiences make you think about? How do his descriptions of what it is like to be blind (for him) change your understanding of the sighted vs. unsighted world? Discuss your insight, perspective and thoughts you have from listening to this show.
Provide the psychology terms you used in your response at the bottom of your comment.
Invisible Made Visible blog response
9/22/14
For this blog we watched episode #464 of This American Life called Invisible Made Visible. Reflecting on the stories these men told, it’s clear to see that it can be a very confusing and frustrating disability to live with. In the circumstance of the man in the hotel room, it seemed almost like a cruel joke, that someone was trying to confuse him, when in reality, he just couldn’t find the rest of the room through touch. When we talked to the blind father, we see that it affected not only his vision, but also the relationship that he had with his daughter.
These experiences make me think of my own sight. I see with clear vision, I can see somewhat in darkness, I can see colors and shapes and lights. Neither of these men has working rods, cones, lens’ or retinas. I think what it makes me think about the most is that these men have never even experienced light, all they see is darkness. They do not know what the color red looks like, they don’t even know what they themselves look like. They can only make their own images in their heads from the information they perceive from their other sensations and stimuli.
His descriptions of being blind make me realize how much every sense is essential to us. This man, because of his blindness in numerous situations tried to use his other senses to make up for what he had lost in sight. For example, when he is in the hotel room, he uses his pressure receptors located all over his body to make a rough sketch of he room. He bumps into things, runs his hands along things and touches everything to understand where he is and where everything else is around him. He does this again, using his heat receptors he finds his daughters arm and follows to where her finger was pointing. In that same scenario, he uses his auditory system, basing where he ran on how upset his daughter got, which lead him to finally understand that she had dropped her toy bear and that there was not a real bear behind them. In again that same scenario, he tries to use his sense of smell, using his olfactory system, to see if he can get a direction in which the bear is. Obviously it would be easier for the man if he could just see that there was not a real bear behind them, but rather that his daughter had dropped her teddy bear, but he didn’t have that ability so he had to use his other senses to figure it out instead.
Another aspect of blindness that I’d like to discuss is when a person has perfectly healthy eyes, yet they cannot see. This has always been interesting to me, and it shows what a large part our brain plays in our senses. Some people have completely healthy eyes, but their brain didn’t develop correctly in the optic area. This means that the person may be able to actually have a sensation, but there is no transduction or perception. It’s incredible that everything we hear, see, taste, smell, and touch is a result of our brain interpreting the signals that our bodies are sending to it.
Terms: Rods, Cones, Lens, Retina, Sensations, Perception, Stimuli, Pressure Receptors, Heat Receptors, Auditory, Olfactory, Optic, Transduction
I feel bad for blind people that may be blind and living or doing something on their own. Without the availability to see he has a difficult time doing day to day things that should be easy but since he can’t since, it’s a challenge. When he is looking for the phone, he has to feel around the room for it and smash into things and run his hands up them because he cannot simply see it and get it. He has to see every detail in his mind like a picture he is painting. By feeling the desk and the walls he is painting the picture of the room in his mind so he knows where everything is at. He goes over the room multiple times but just cannot find the phone. He goes to bed and when he wakes up he hears a phone he immediately finds it on a place that he is sure he felt before. After this he goes to bed, but when he gets to where he thinks it is he finds a wall. Now he is completely confused and has to regenerate the image of the room by feeling up the room again. The poor man thought he had mapped up the whole room and thought he knew how to get around but after a few days of wondering the room, he discovered he didn’t know the room at all. When the guy talks about the neglect he does to his daughter, not on purpose, is sad because he just wants to be a good father but can’t because of his impairment. He has to try to hide this from his daughter because she is too young to understand. He tries to be the best father he can but it is a challenge. Blind people throughout all of their lives are challenged daily. A simple task such as brushing your teeth is a problem because they have to feel around to find the brush and the paste, then put the paste on the brush to brush. Without seeing this is a real challenge because how do you know if you have the right toothbrush or if you squeezed paste onto your brush. In a way they have to be led around on a day to day basis for life to be truly easy. I’m glad I can see because it makes it easier to learn, get a job and to have a life that I can truly enjoy.
The biggest thing I learned from listening to this was that the ability to see is extremely valuable and that we shouldn’t take it for granted. When they talked with the man in the hotel room is was almost sad how he described his journey to find the phone. It is such a crazy thing because walking over and grabbing a phone isn’t a big deal in most of our everyday lives. This man, on the other hand, had to give everything he had to find it. He described how he felt everything in the room and that while he was doing this, he was creating his own little “image” in his head. He relied very much on the stimulus he received from touching objects. He described “mulling” each object because he wanted to really know what the object was like.
The story of the man with the daughter also made me realize how precious a simple thing like eyesight can be. He used an example of how he was playing with his daughter and she kicked a foam soccer ball past him. He obviously couldn’t see the ball, so he would have had to rely on his hearing. He couldn’t hear the ball though and his daughter became very upset. I feel very bad for him because as hard as he tried, he still couldn’t detect that his daughter had kicked a ball towards him. He also spoke of how he was carrying his daughter as he was walking around campus. He explained she began to start saying “bear.” He became nervous and started to detect a “bear” anyway he could. He grabbed his daughter’s hand to see which direction she was pointing, and he even tried to smell for the bear. Although he ran around just to figure out it was her stuffed animal, he had to use every sense available to try to detect it.
I’ve realized from the listening that eyesight truly a tremendous thing that we aren’t thankful enough for. The complexity of the eyes is incredible. The normal person has eyes which are capable of perceiving light, detecting motion, and sending signals to the brain. The unsighted don’t have this luxury. They have to take advantage of every other sense in their body almost as if they learn to have hypersensitive hearing, smell, and touch.
Terms- stimuli, perception
Jacob Clark
Psych
22 september 2014
Invisible made visible
Surprisingly enough, I have actually had quite a bit of reflection on what it would be like to be blind prior to this. What would it be like being in a new place? how are they self sufficient? etc. The whole hotel room thing honestly makes me feel uneasy to think about. I mean, i imagine the second you step into the room, you start forming a map in your head. That is what you see, that is reality to you. What happens, and how do you react when what you feel doesn't match that picture? I imagine that completely wrecks that picture. I can imagine it can cause severe disorientation and anxiety.
His description of what it is like to be blind lines up awkwardly well with how i’ve always pictured it. It was rather humorous some of the situations it has put him in as well. As far as changing my perspective, I kind of see “blindness” as a highly subjective thing. The man in this story may not have sight, but I believe this has allowed him “see” so much better than if he had never lost his vision.
After listening to the show, what stuck out the most to me was his little girl finally understanding his condition. I can only imagine what a big moment that was for him. After dealing with her fragile ignorance for several years, seeing her begin to understand must have been happy and heartbreaking all at the same time. A sign of her growing up.
Terms - Perception, sensation
This was such an amazing and inspirational interview/show to listen to. Obviously blindness is not something that would be easy to live with but some of us in this world have to. When the man was in the hotel, it seemed like someone has come into his room while he was away and re arranged everything on him as a cruel joke, but in reality, he hadn’t found the rest of the room yet, he just assumed the wall continued but it actually did not. During the part where he talked about not being able to find the phone, you could really tell that he was getting angry with himself for not being able to find it. He made a very good point about not just being blind, but when he was trying to find the phone he said, “Nothing is visible until I touch it.” That was such an eye opener for me because I feel us privileged enough to see everything are taking that sense for granted and we definitely should not be because it can be taken away from us just as fast as it was granted to us.
This man had a hard enough time trying to live a normal life with a job and a wife while being blind, but also having a three-year old daughter on top of that has to be hard also. One thing that also made me realize how much of a privilege it is to see is when he said he was sitting at the table and his daughter rolled a ball by him, and obviously he wasn’t able to see it so he had to rely on his other senses. Because he had no idea that the ball had rolled past him, he only heard his daughter becoming very upset and he had no reason why. He finally figured out that his daughter had become upset because his daughter had thought her father was ignoring her all day by not playing with her. The other story he mentioned also made me privileged that I can see. The story he told about his daughter and the “Bear”. He became very nervous and tried to find the bear with his other senses. Although he was running in every direction, only making his daughter more upset, to realize that his daughter had dropped her teddy-bear on the ground. Than he told the story about what it was like when his daughter found out that her papa does not see. This was such an incredible part of the story because his daughter was trying so hard to show him what character was on Sesame Street while in reality he had no idea what she was trying to do.
I myself have actually taken care of a blind man before so I know exactly what this man was talking about while trying to find where everything was. I am a CNA and at my nursing home back home there was a blind man. He would always have us tell him what everything looked like, where he was, and it was just so interesting to see. When we would walk with him, he would always say “If I am going to run into anything, don’t tell me, I learn that way.” I thought this man was so interesting because who says that?! (We never let him run into anything by the way). ☺ I learned from that resident and this interview/show that just because you become blind, that doesn’t mean your life is over. You just have to start living it a different way.
By listening to this radio post, I've really thought about what life would be without eyesight. I wouldn't be able to perform majority of my daily tasks without it. The radio show interviewed a man who was blind. He has a different perception that we do, for he doesn't see anything until he touches it. When he touches things, his other senses give him a more in depth sense of stimuli than any ‘normal’ human would get.
I couldn't imagine living in a world where everything was a complete mystery; in a world that if you happen to not touch one thing, you could miss out on a major opportunity. This is almost like what he talked about in the prologue. He talked about how he had searched the entire hotel room, even the bathroom, for the phone so that he could call his wife. He finally gave up looking for it after searching the walls. The next morning, he woke up to the sound of a phone ringing. He then realized that there was entire chunk of the room that he didn't discover because he had given up. You can’t assume anything when you’re blind because, you’ll miss out on important things. His emotions vary. With that being said he stated that blindness wasn't the problem, it was the embarrassment.
One of the harder things that he had to do was to teach his daughter that he was blind. He explained it to his two-year-old as that he sees what she sees when her eyes are closed. Only his are opened. That confused her. She was cognitively developed to understand the complexity of that statement. Over time, more and more events occurred which made him feel like a bad parent. When his daughter was three, she finally realized her father couldn't see.
It made me think of all of the things that I take for granted every single day. I couldn't imagine living without sight at all. I give all respect for people that are blind for what they are capable of doing. The fat that they live normal lives and make their disability work is truly amazing. This radio show made me realize how hard it was parenting as a blind person and more.
Terms: development, stimuli, senses and perception.
This episode of This American Life was called “Invisible Made Visible,” and the section we had to listen to was about a man who has been blind since he was eighteen. He recalls a time when he was in a hotel room trying to find a phone, but was unable to find it until the next day, when he received a phone call. He also recalls a time when he was walking with his daughter in Canada and he misunderstood what she meant when she said “bear;” him, taking it literally, she meaning that she had dropped her teddy bear. Listening to his stories made me realize how much we take not only our vision, but the rest of our senses in general for granted. Senses are a natural thing; everybody has them, so it’s nearly impossible to imagine what it would be like to lose one. I felt pretty bad for this guy; at the beginning, Ira Glass mentions that Ryan Knighton started to lose his sight when he was eighteen. That is when my sympathy for him began. It must be horrible to be born with and grow up with a sense, and then start to lose it before you are even really starting your life as an adult. A lot of us, myself included, complain about our eyesight or call ourselves “blind” if we do not have our glasses or contacts, but really, we should be glad that we can at least see. Sure, the world may be a little blurry, or in my case, a lot blurry, but our vision is able to be fixed; our eyes are still able to communicate with our brains. People like Ryan cannot see anything at all; maybe figures or light, but not whole objects, not even colors. Listening to this episode made me wonder what can cause blindness. Cataracts affect the lenses of one or both eyes, which can make it difficult to see colors, to see through glares, and in general makes vision blurry. Glaucoma deals with the fluid pressure of one or both eyes. This increase in pressure damages the optic nerve and the retina, which causes a decline in peripheral vision. Macular degeneration is more common in elders. It deteriorates the macula (nerve endings) in the retina, which is crucial in sharp vision. This can cause blind spots or blurry spots. I wish they would have given the cause for Ryan’s blindness; it would have been interesting to know what caused him to go blind at such a young age. His descriptions in his stories made me think about how important vision really is. Most people can walk into a new place and have it figured out in seconds just by looking at it; blind people have to take time to feel things or places in order to understand them. They have to rely on all of their remaining sense all of the time, because that is the only way they can know what surrounds them. I truly cannot imagine living without vision, or without any one of my senses for that matter. This episode really made me appreciate my senses, even though they may not always be the sharpest or greatest.
Terms used: vision, senses, blindness, cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, retina, lens, optic nerve, eyes, peripheral vision
If I took anything away from listening to the beginning of this episode of This American Life, it is that I should not take my eyesight for granted. Listening to these few stories of Ryan Knighton, I realized how difficult life would be without having the ability to see. Listening to this man who was basically lost in his hotel room, I put myself into his shoes. If I was looking for something so simple and had so much difficulty finding it, I would be very frustrated. This is his everyday life; he has to deal with these types of situations all of the time. I wouldn’t have the patience to deal with what he does; however, he doesn’t have a choice. Not only would it be frustrating to get lost in an everyday hotel room, it would also be very terrifying. Yes, it was only a hotel room where not much could go wrong, but it makes you worry about what else could go wrong in other aspects of his life. What if he’s walking down the street, and he takes a wrong turn heading toward a busy road? These are the instances I would worry about if I were blind. As for raising a child being blind; that would come with a huge pile of challenges. As he explained, his daughter had problems understanding the idea of her father’s blindness, as any young child would. He explained a few of his issues regarding his daughter and his blindness. The story about his daughter saying ‘bear’ was one of the funny stories, but it just again goes to show the confusion he has to deal with daily. Living in a forested area where bears were common, of course he thought there was an actual bear. As it ended up, his daughter had just dropped her stuffed bear on the ground. I really felt bad for Ryan when he told the story of his daughter and the ball. Tessa rolled the ball to him, expecting his to roll it back. Ryan did not hear the ball as it rolled right by. Tessa became upset as to why her dad didn’t want to play with him. I would definitely feel helpless not only for Ryan, but also for Tessa. Ryan knows his daughter won’t be able to understand the concept of blindness if he tried explaining it, and Tessa is very upset and doesn’t know why her dad doesn’t want to play with her. There is no doubt those first few years raising Tessa were difficult for their family.
Whether Ryan’s blindness was caused by glaucoma, cataracts, or some other disorder, going blind after eighteen years of eyesight would be torture. I would rather be blind from birth than lose my eyesight after being able to experience it for so many years. If a person was blind ever since birth, they would not know what they are missing out on. Ryan did know what he was missing, which is very unfortunate. Hopefully we can soon come up with techniques to prevent blindness from occurring. This assignment just reminded me not to take everyday senses for granted, because someday those simple senses could be gone.
Terms: Cataracts, Glaucoma
Listening to the experiences of the blind man in the hotel room and with trying to make his daughter understand his condition made me frustrated more than anything. It was easy to visualize him struggling around the room trying to find the phone, because even though I’m not blind, I have fumble around in a dark room trying to find a remote or my phone. So in that case, I realize how much I take for granted my vision, as it makes daily activities incredibly convenient. Being able to see is not just for convenience, but also for safety, as described in the story of him and his daughter in a parking lot. Especially with a child who is only two, having to rely on someone else when you are possibly in danger would be frightening, and I am glad I do not have to worry about that. Again, I think about all the times being able to see has kept me out of dangerous situations, and all I can do is wonder how the blind manage it. To help a young child to understand that you cannot see and what that entails, however, is one of the hardest things I could imagine doing. Because a child around the age of two or three is in the preoperational stage, their way of thinking is egocentric, and cannot understand other people’s perspectives. This makes it incredibly difficult for the young daughter who can see to understand that her father can’t, and as a result it leads to many frustrating moments for both daughter and father. Not being able to see is something I don’t like thinking about, and it makes me respect the people who can’t as they deal with a disability that affects every aspect of their lives.
Key Terms: Preoperational Period, Egocentric
This man named Ryan Knighton explains the issues he goes through day to day being blind. He starts by saying he has to feel around for all objects and has he explains his attempt to find the phone on the nightstand to call his wife in the prologue I almost feel bad for him. He says “I groped the coffee table” but claims there is no phone anywhere to be found in the room and he continues to describe his actions as “A first person video game.” Next he talks about standing in his house where his child kicked a foam soccerball to him, but the ball was too quiet for him to hear it. The daughter, Tes felt as though her dad was ignoring her. The fact that he felt like a terrible useless father because he can’t see is just awful. It’s not like he can help it, he didn't choose to be blind. Another story he tells is when his daughter is crying and he doesn’t know why so he goes to comfort her and accidentally ends up hugging another child, a little boy. As he explains all of his experiences with his daughter and miscommunications that happen between them I feel bad, but can’t help but laugh.
Although he has a good humor about these stories it is scary to think about how hard it would be to have kids and be forced to try to live a normal life and not being able to see. Young kids can’t interpret things like that, so they feel neglected and may possible even develop things like avoidant attachment. He can’t develop a sense of perception at all when it comes to sight and he can’t experience and see all the wonderful things in the world. Without perception you would have difficulties with the process of transduction as well as sensation in some cases, like driving. I think the attitude Ryan has about being blind makes things better, if you’re blind there isn’t much you can do about it. Might as well make the best of what you got, at least it’s not the end of the world! He seems very pleased with his life, and his main goal his helping his daughter understand why he can’t see and why he “ignores” her as she thinks. Ryan seems so excited when Tes finally comes to the conclusion “Daddy can’t see!! Mom can see, Tes can see.” I do think it would be very had to live as a blind person, but there are worst things in the world.
Terms: avoidant attachment, perception, transduction, sensation
Listening to Ryan’s stories of being blind made think about how lucky I am to have my vision. I could not imagine what he goes through on a daily basis. When he talked about his hotel experience, I was thinking about how difficult being blind would be and all the obstacles he faces when he is alone.I’m sure when he his others he still faces challenges finding his way around and getting where he needs to go. In the hotel room, he was trying to feel his way around and couldn’t find a phone to call his wife. If I were him, I would get so frustrated in trying to find items I need and also trying to walk would be a huge challenge, especially, if the place is new to me. I do not think I would have the patience to walk around and find what I need. My heart aches for blind people because they cannot see the people they love the most, their friends and family. Especially since he got to discover the “color” world for eighteen years before going blind. I think being able to see everything for eighteen years of your life and suddenly it is taken away from you would be horrible. At one point in the video, he staid he felt useless as a dad. This was saddening to hear because a parent shouldn’t feel useless but I can understand why he would feel this way because he won’t be able to see some of the biggest milestones in his daughter's life. He, however, can be there the best he can for her and help her like another parent would easily do. Just because he can not see doesn’t mean he isn’t a great dad to her. He has a little girl and knowing he cannot see her and play with her like a normal dad is heart breaking. The only way a dad should feel useless is if ignores his children and Ryan talk about multiple times when he spent time with his daughter. The little girl was getting frustrated with her dad when they were playing with the soccer ball and she obviously did not know that he does not have the privilege to see his surroundings. Later in the show, however, she figured out that her father could not see and that her mother on the other hand can see. Out of the five senses we have I think losing your sight would be the worst because you would not be able to see all of the wonderful things happening around you and you would not be able to see people you love and just enjoy the scenery around you. I also think losing your hearing would be horrible. I couldn’t imagine not being able to hear my parents or friends voices. I think we take advantage of our senses and do not appreciate what we have. Something like what happened to Ryan could happen to anyone at any given time. We need to appreciate what we have now like our senses because someday we may not have them anymore.
After listening to the radio show I was amazed by the way that Ryan was able to get around. I never have really thought about the struggles that come with being blind. While I often see blind people around doing everyday normal activities, I have never stopped to think about how those activities are so much more of a challenge for them. Hearing that Ryan lost his sight at the age of eighteen really resonated with me. I am eighteen and I can’t imagine losing my eyesight now. I know that I would struggle emotionally because everything that once came so easily to me would suddenly have to be relearned in a new way. In reading about the experiences that Ryan had in the hotel room, I felt an appreciation for the fact that I am able to see. It made me think about the day to day struggles that all blind people must face. Going into an unknown environment by himself, not knowing where anything was, must have been extremely frustrating. I felt empathy for him, and couldn’t imagine being in that situation. It also struck me that his disability not only impacted his life but his daughter’s as well. He was not always able to do the things with her that he wanted to do. When he said “Blindness is not the problem, embarrassment is” I could understand why he would say this. I am sure that he, as well as many other people with disabilities, doesn’t want to constantly have to ask for help. They’re embarrassed to have to rely on other people and not be as independent as they would like to be. Ryan tried the best that he could to explain his blindness to his 2 year old daughter. I had never thought about having to explain a disability to a child in a way that they would understand. While his explanation didn’t make much sense to his daughter, it helped me get a better understanding of what it is really like to be blind. Both Ryan’s explanation and the incident in the hotel room made me realize that I am very lucky to have the sense of sight. This is one of the many things that we take for granted every day. It is a gift that some people will never know the luxury of having.
The experiences of Ryan Knighton really make me think about how much harder it must be for him to go into an unknown place than it is for someone who has full use of their vision. Like for me to go into a hotel room like he did I would have no problem finding out where the phone would be because I would just see it sitting there. For him on the other hand he would have to make a sort of mental map of the room based solely on his sense of touch. His other senses start to take over and help him out, and are probably kicked into overdrive in order to make up for his lack of sight. If I were to be out into the same situation that he was I would never be able to do that. Even if I were to feel around the room multiple times I would still be super disoriented on where I was in it. When it comes to his daughter the thing that really sticks out to me is the fact that he will never know what she looks like because of the fact that he is blind. I have trouble wrapping my mind around that fact, because I imagine seeing your son or daughter for the first time would be one of your greatest experiences in your life and he didn’t get to experience it at all. listening to his stories really put into perspective how much we take our sense of sight for granted. I never wake up in the morning and think to myself, “I’m so thankful that I’m able to see.” Most mornings I think I would rather not be able to see so that I could back to sleep. It makes you realize how important it is to be able to see and how much of your experiences in this world are connected to being able to see things. Yes, he is still able to smell all the great smells that are in this world, and he is able to hear his daughter’s voice in the morning, so he knows that she is there. But he has no way of knowing exactly what she looks like, he can only form a mental image of her based on how she is described to him, he’s lost his entire sense of perception. To me that is a really sad thing because when I have kids I want to be able to watch them grow up and play sports and graduate and get married. He will only be able to hear about those things and not actually be able to see them.
Terms- Perception
After listening to this radio show, which Ryan was able to bring humor into, it made me try and imagine what it would really be like to experience what he goes through on a day-to-day basis. And after putting the humor aside it occurred that never being comfortable in a new place (possibly a familiar one), or being able to experience things that a dad should, would be incredibly scary and hurtful.
It was interesting to have him explain how much he truly relies on putting his other senses to use since one is not operational. Like feeling around a hotel room, or having to smell something in his surroundings, or listen for his daughters voice or the sound of a telephone, his whole perception of the world is different from being unable to utilize one sense. It would be incredibly terrifying to be lost in something as simple as a hotel room, and have to deal with occurrences like that all throughout life. The world would be an entirely different place if we weren’t able to see our surroundings, and would greatly impact everything we do, and supremely, our whole life.
Having a child that doesn’t understand, and can’t yet comprehend what you are going through, who thinks everyone is just like them and everyone is capable of doing, seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. everything they can would be an extremely difficult thing to take on. It would be upsetting to learn that you had unintentionally neglected your daughter and she was not yet able to understand why. The moment when she was finally able to get a grasp on what he had been living with was a rather funny instance, but also a painful one, because she had realized that her father was different from her, her mom, and all the other unimpaired people in her life.
Terms: senses, perception
After getting a chance to listen to Ryan Knightons’ stories in episode 464 of This American Life I realized something. I am extremely lucky to have the ability to see. I can’t describe how fortunate I am to know that my sensory receptors (rods and cones) in the retina can detect light waves. Honestly I can’t even imagine my life without being able to see. Five minutes ago I tried it out. I walked into my dorm room with my eyes closed and attempted to do a few small tasks however, it didn’t much work out. I managed to hit my head, trip, and about knock the TV off of its stand. Knowing how hard it was for me to come into my own room where I have been living for about five weeks, I don’t even no what it would be like walking into a room you have never been in before. Since I’m eighteen I tried to think of myself in his situation and for me it was nearly impossible. To go through such a hard thing at such a young age must have been awful. After hearing the story of Ryan in the hotel room I was a little sad. I bet his wife was more than worried about him the whole night, but it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t give her a call. While in the hotel room Ryan used other senses to help him discover where the phone was located. He used his pressure receptors, which allowed him to detect tactile stimulation and tranduce it into information processed in the brain as different types of pressure on his skin. For example he knew what was what, like where the sofa and nightstand were. One thing that interested me that he said was that he doesn’t create a map in his head but more like he’s “wandering around in a first-person video game. One where nothing is visible until he touches it.” I guess if you couldn’t see this would probably be the easiest way to keep your head straight and have somewhat of an idea of where you are going. Another sense he used was the ability to hear, or audition. His hairs cells are the sensory receptors for detecting auditory input. Once he woke up he used this to find the phone even though he had not a clue where it was located. The other story he told also made me feel a little sad inside. What would it be like to have a mom, dad, son, daughter, or even spouse be blind? When his daughter Tess found out her dad was blind at just the young age of three what do you think she was thinking. At this age she was only in the preoperational stage where it is hard to imagine logical outcomes. Being so young and not fully developed it must have been hard for her brain to process. With all of that said, without sensation and perception not much would make sense to us and would be hard for our brain to know what was going on. So by using our senses and specifically sight we can see the world in a different way than people who are less fortunate and cannot see. Even though I don’t have great vision as it is, it’s better than nothing and I’m grateful that I can see. The psychological terms I used were rods, cones, retina, pressure receptors, transduce, hair cells, sensory receptors, developed, preoperational stage, sensation, and perception.
In the hotel room he finds it confusing that the phone isn’t where it normally is. After feeling to the other side of the bed, he feels the night stand. He assumes maybe the phone would be there and it isn’t. He describes it, life, wondering around in a first person video game. Meaning that you don’t know believe something until you feel it and know it is actually there. He sort of feels like the walls are boxing him into undiscovered parts of the room. This experience makes me think about how confused, frustrated, and someone nervous you would be if you couldn’t see, you were in a new environment that you have no clue where stuff is, and the thought of something being there, or not being there, at one time, and the next time you feel around it is there, or not. This makes me think more of how bad it really is to be blind. A personal experience for me is without my contacts or glasses I can actually see colors, and shapes. It’s just the fact that they are all blurred together. Now being blind is more extreme than that, but from my experience without my contacts it can be a freaky experience. You see a blur from afar away but don’t know if it is going to come at you, attack you, trying to help you, or whatever the case is.
The situation with his daughter makes me think about how being blind just doesn’t affect your sight, it also affects your sense of hearing. Not in a major way of being deaf, as he said quit thinks such as the foam ball of his daughters is non-existing to him because it is so quiet. The other factor of being blind would be sense of touch. Your sense of touch has to be great, accurate, and you have to know exactly it is what you are touching or else you have no idea what to make it out as. The situation he gave was his daughter on his back walking through the park, his daughter says bear, and he thinks there is a bear. In panic mode he walks further from the bear trying to be avoidant of it, this makes his daughter more upset. Finally he reaches around with his other hand and his daughters’ stuffed bear is gone. Now without the sense of touch he would have had no clue that she had a bear when she first was on his back, and when she dropped it leads back to sense of hearing. He couldn’t hear a stuffed bear drop.
Some thoughts that were going through my mind during this show were how fortunate I am to be able to see. The insight I have of seeing blur without contacts is always difficult or inconvenient to me, but I realize that instead of seeing blurs I could just see black. I am grateful to know that contacts and glasses were all that I needed in order to see. In comparison to the show it describes how all of our senses have to work together to “assists” other lacking senses. Like the example of he can’t see, but touch is key to him due to the fact it acts as his eyes.
Terms: Sense, blind, touch, hearing, blurs, avoidant
When I was listening to the radio show, I initially thought that the man’s daughter was going to be at the hotel with him. I did not realize until I started playing the program that she would not be present, but discussed in the next segment. I also did not realize that the man was going to be blind. My initial reaction to the first part of the show was that it was really weird that this man would travel blind. I cannot imagine losing vision and going somewhere completely new by myself. I would be panicked and worrisome when I couldn’t figure things out, and honestly, it would probably lead to anxiety. I was really impressed by how he managed to use deductive reasoning to figure out where the phone would be located. It would be really hard to figure it out on your own based on the other senses. When the phone started ringing the next day it made me nervous. It reminded me of a scary movie and seemed like someone was in the room playing a cruel joke. This really put it into perspective how important vision is and I thought about how much I take it for granted. In the second segment the man told some jokes and made light of his sight situation, but it was really sad listening to him as he tried to explain being blind to his daughter. It can be hard for adults to understand, so I don’t know how I would even begin to describe it to a child. What really stuck out to me was when she said, “Who is that?” while watching cartoons. It is just heartbreaking how she can’t understand the condition her father is in. She is just too young to understand it all. If I were in the position this man was in, I don’t know if I would be able to explain it. It would just be so upsetting.
This man has to make the most of the senses that he does have. We hear as he uses his hands to feel around the room and his hearing to listen for the phone ringing. His sensory adaptation has to increase because he is missing a sense. Earlier this week I read about the steps that we go through in order to see. You have to process light waves in the physical stimulus stage. Rods and cones are required in the sensation stage. Next you have to use transduction, like we discussed in the blog post earlier this week. Finally you must use perception. Prior to this chapter I didn’t realize that there were so many steps and there are so many places sight could go wrong. I would have never really thought about this process because sight is something that I am so used to having. This radio show really made me think about how easy it would be to lose this sense. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to not have sight, even after listening to this man speak.
Blind, Touch, Hear, Senses, Sensory Adaptation, Physical Stimulus, Light Waves, Rods, Cones, Sensation, Transduction, Perception
Cassandra Rutledge
Invisible Made Visible
First off, I loved this radio broadcast. The thing that I think about the most with the two blind men are how extremely difficult things have to be. Taking away one of the senses takes a long time to get use to. Having blindness must be a very confusing and frustating thing to have to deal with through everyday life. I do have one question though, were the men born blind or did they have an accident causing blindness? The description of what the blind man said was very interesting because he did not complain on how difficult it was, but told us just how hard he tried in everyday life, and described to us how extremely frustrating the diability can be. He also told us that even though he wanted to play with his daughter it was often difficult to be able to understand why she was upset about him not kicking the ball back. He bacame frustrated after finding out the his daughter only dropped her teddy bear, that is why she was yelling bear while taking a walk.
The whole talk show made me think of my sight. I may have corrective lenses, but even without them in I can clearly see a face or recognize something in the dark or light. The men do not have fully working rods, cones, lens', or retinas. The one guy says that he can still see smudges just can not make out the smudges are. The eye must have been severely damaged in order for this man not to be able to see light or make out certain shapes.
The describtions from the blind men makes me think about how each and every sense we have is important to our everyday life. The others senses are said to strengthen at the loss of another one, but still the blind man described his struggles that he had even when he used his other senses to cover up for the loss of his sight.
I have never thought of what it would be like to be blind. The way he describes it I would never want to be blind. The way it sounds is that being blind can be embarassing and also very frusturating. One of my thoughts is, if we would all try being blind for a day would we get to know a little bit of how it feels to be completely blind?
Terms: rods, cones, lens', retina, senses, sight, blindness
Listening to Ryan made me realize how hard it could be for someone who cannot see to describe it to those that are younger as well as living their day to day lives. When talking about how he started to lose his eyesight at 18 I was extremely thankful that I have not had that problem, after living for 18 years of sight and all of a sudden you start to lose your sight would be a terrifying experience and I do not know how I would act if that had happened to me. When talking about his daughter and trying to explain to her how he can’t see he tried to use humor to hide a very serious and painful part of his life. He talks about all of the problems that he had with the hotel room and it made me realize that simple things like moving around the room and trying to find simple items like the phone. When he had to try to locate his way through the room so that he could try to find his bed for the night and, it grew even worse the next morning when he realized that there was another wall that separated part of the room and because of that he realized that he could have easily gotten lost in his own room and that was something that terrified him. When talking about his daughter and how it was hard for him to try to explain to her how he is not able to see her when she calls for him or able to see what made her mad, sad, etc. reminded me that he would not be able to see as she grows up and may not be able to help her as much in her younger years, an important part of her life to be around her parents. He never knew that he was causing problems between himself and his child when she was younger and how it could affect the relationship that he would have with her. Overall those that are blind have many new problems that stem from the loss of sight that can affect their relationships with family members especially younger ones and all of them have their own ways of trying to find their way through life’s simple things including going into a hotel room and finding a phone, something simple to us becomes a major challenge to those without sight.
From listening to the beginning of this episode of This American Life, I have learned that I definitely shouldn’t take my eyesight for granted. I should really be more thankful that I have working cones, rods, and retinas. The thing I couldn’t imagine to live with is to not see colors of any sort, just darkness. I wouldn’t know what the color blue looks like, or even what I look like. The only thing blind people can do is make images in their heads from the info they get from other stimuli and sensations.
After listening to Ryan Knighton’s perception of life, as well as the stories, I realized how difficult it would be everyday not having the precious ability to see. I know if I was always searching for something that could found so simply by a person with vision, I’d be beyond frustrated. Yet, this is the stuff he has to deal with every day of his life. Every day he has to deal with searching for sofas and phones, without any vision. Another thing about his struggles would be the terrifying aspect of getting lost in something like a hotel room. Or how about walking down the street and taking the wrong turn? That’s dangerous if you ask me, and it would certainly frighten me to know that there’s the possibility that I could wander off somewhere I didn't mean to go in the first place. I’m sure he would be use to it after a while, because he obviously has no choice. He would have to adapt as much as he can to his disability, and I think he’s done it for the most part.
Another thing that interests me is when an individual has healthy, perfect-looking eyes, but can’t see. This goes to show how big of a deal our brains are when it comes to senses and functionability. Just because you have a pair of healthy eyes, doesn’t mean everything’s good when it comes to being able to see. The brain has to develop correctly in the optic area, or the area that requires perception or transduction.
Overall, eyesight is just an amazing ability that fortunate people like me have. I couldn’t imagine living in someone else’s shoes, such as Ryan.
Terms used: Rods, Lens, Retinas, Cones, Optic, Transduction, Perception, Sensation, Stimuli
From listening to the beginning of this episode of This American Life, I have learned that I definitely shouldn’t take my eyesight for granted. I should really be more thankful that I have working cones, rods, and retinas. The thing I couldn’t imagine to live with is to not see colors of any sort, just darkness. I wouldn’t know what the color blue looks like, or even what I look like. The only thing blind people can do is make images in their heads from the info they get from other stimuli and sensations.
After listening to Ryan Knighton’s perception of life, as well as the stories, I realized how difficult it would be everyday not having the precious ability to see. I know if I was always searching for something that could found so simply by a person with vision, I’d be beyond frustrated. Yet, this is the stuff he has to deal with every day of his life. Every day he has to deal with searching for sofas and phones, without any vision. Another thing about his struggles would be the terrifying aspect of getting lost in something like a hotel room. Or how about walking down the street and taking the wrong turn? That’s dangerous if you ask me, and it would certainly frighten me to know that there’s the possibility that I could wander off somewhere I don’t meant to go in the first place. I’m sure he would be use to it after a while, because he obviously has no choice. He would have to adapt as much as he can to his disability, and I think he’s done it for the most part.
Another thing that interests me is when an individual has healthy, perfect-looking eyes, but can’t see. This goes to show how big of a deal our brains are when it comes to senses and functionability. Just because you have a pair of healthy eyes, doesn’t mean everything’s good when it comes to being able to see. The brain has to develop correctly in the optic area, or the area that requires perception or transduction.
Overall, eyesight is just an amazing ability that fortunate people like me have. I couldn’t imagine living in someone else’s shoes, such as Ryan.
Terms used: Rods, Lens, Retinas, Cones, Optic, Transduction, Perception, Sensation, Stimuli
I have personally never thought about the hardships that people who are blind deal with every day. The guy in the show just came back to his hotel room and he wanted to call his wife. He needed a phone to do so, and this is easy for us. We can spot a phone within seconds from when we enter a hotel room. I never thought about trying to do this without seeing. He start to look in usual places and when he doesn’t find them there he starts to encompass the room feeling everything. This would be very sad for me personally. He is wondering the room completely lost. He gives up and goes to bed. He is woken up by the phone ringing and when he tracks it down and hangs up, he is lost in the room again. He said there is now a wall where the bed was. I would be completely depleted and upset about this if I was in his situation. He has to start wondering the room feeling walls, until he finds the bed again.
The next story of him and his daughter is also very sad. He is walking down a trail with his daughter and she says bear. They are in the woods and the father is very scared. He thinks there is an actual bear in the area and he can’t protect his daughter. He tries to go away from where he thinks the bear is, but his daughter gets upset. I would be very scared knowing I was helpless and I couldn’t protect my daughter or myself from this bear. He finally feels her hands and realizes she dropped her teddy bear. I would feel relieved at this moment knowing I didn’t kill or hurt my daughter or myself in this situation. I would feel as if I was useless and I couldn’t be left alone with anybody, even myself. I never thought about some of these situations before and am very grateful, that I do have vision. It makes life exponentially easier. I never imagined or empathized with blind people. I overlooked the struggle and the uncertainty that comes with being blind.
The main topic of this radio show was about blindness. It was about this guy named Ryan who was blind. I thought it was interesting when he talked about his condition was like wandering around in a first-person video game and that nothing is visible to him until he touches it. I thought it was interesting when he was explaining his condition to his two-year-old daughter and he faced many complications because she couldn't understand why he wouldn't want to play with her. There will be many challenges and it would be really hard to do a lot of things, you would almost want to give up. I thought it was cool how he explained what things he had to do to accommodate his condition. The story was kind of funny, but he said that he could still see smears and he was trying to see where the outline of the bear might be, and then he tried to smell for the bear because when someone is blind usually your other senses are a lot stronger than your other ones. I liked how he talked about how his daughter finally realized that he couldn't see because its a lot harder to talk to someone or to communicate to someone who doesn't have the same visions as you because you cant be like “look at that” because they would have no idea what you would be talking about. It would also be hard to go places with someone who was blind because they are constantly having to feel their way around or you would have to help guide them. In listening to this radio post, I was thinking about my own vision and how much different my life would be if I couldn't see anything. I have pretty good vision and I just cant imagine what it would be like if I couldn't sleep. Yes, I can close my eyes and try walking places, but I can open them whenever I want to. I just cant even fathom the frustration I would get if I wasn't able to see colors or people, or light. It would effect me not only physically, but also emotionally because you are going from a world of color and beauty to a dark place of blackness all the time. I think the main thing that I took out of this radio show is that we shouldn't take our senses for granted because that is how we perceive things in our perception, and they are a big part of our development as humans. They are a big part of our life and it would be terrible and frustrating to lose some of them.
psychological terms; blindness, sight, smell, physical, emotional, senses, perception, and development
For this blog post, we were assigned to listen to an Episode on This American Life called Invisible Made Visible. After listening, I thought about how much I take my eyesight for granted. I always figure, if you have eyes you can see. Thats not always the case. For example, Ryan Knighton, a blind man who was traveling, entered his hotel room and immediately searched for the phone to reach his worried wife. He struggled looking for the phone and I immediately thought someone was playing an uncaring prank on him. But, turns out the phone was on a coffee table he didn’t “feel up.” This is because Ryan couldn’t find the other parts of the room, including a wall. Ryan Knighton also questioned, if his blindness was going to affect his relationship with his daughter, Tess. She was just too young to understand that her daddy couldn’t see what she see’s. For instance, Tess kicked a quiet nerf ball at her dads feet but he didn’t respond. The ball went right passed him and he kept walking. She was saddened because she wanted to play. Ryan notices that she begins to pout, but he has no idea what is going on until his wife realizes why she is crying. These experiences that he has are terrifying to me because it would be a totally different world being blind. You have to adapt to a new environment using different senses that weren’t normal to you to use before. I felt sympathy for Ryan and his family.
These people in this episode of This American Life, have dysfunctioning eyes causing blindness to occur. They also can not develop a sense of perception. Their blindness affects their activities of daily living tremendously. Ryan Knighton describes blindness has wandering around in a first person video game, nothing is visible until he touches it. He also describes it as funny and disorienting. His descriptions change my understanding of the sighted vs. the unsighted world. It makes me appreciate my senses and how valuable they are to our daily lives. These people cope with blindness everyday and value their senses. They develop sensory adaptation to react to stimuli and I believe this is something they learn throughout human development. The process of transduction does not occur because the cones and rods do not function properly in the eye. Even though blind people are not included in the trichromatic theory, they can possibly see blotches of things like Ryan. I understand blindness as a way of life and how only a dysfunctioning sense can make things strenuous.
Overall, people with eyesight are fortunate enough to experience the world differently than blind people. Ryan mentioned blindness as a possible embarrassment to his life because he runs into things constantly. But, as people, we need to accept the fact that all humans are different in their own unique way and judging them will not change anything.
Terms: Senses, Blindness, Perception, Sensory Adaptation, Stimuli, Human Development, Transduction, Cones, Rods,Trichromatic Theory
I have often times wondered what it is like to be blind and what difficulties they face. Take away one of our five senses and so many little things that we take for granted disappear. For example, when do they know to stop wiping? That is a legitimate question. I am not entirely sure that I want it answered, either. There are other things too, like imagine how difficult it would be to transition from home to moving out to college when you cannot see the campus, only feel it? While Ryan’s account of his hotel experience only scratched the surface of my curiosity, I did find his description of the event to be very interesting.
When he first said that he woke up to the sound of the phone ringing, all that I could think about was the bit from V/H/S where the two people are staying in the hotel room and each night someone comes into their room and films them as they sleep. If I were in Ryan’s situation there, I probably would have shit myself. That idea that blind people can have an image of a room in their head, only for it to be completely inaccurate is really terrifying. I cannot even imagine being able to get lost in a hotel room. There are so many other scenarios too, like traveling to foreign countries, navigating an airport. Not only that, but all of the things you would no longer be able to enjoy, like aquariums and art.
I had also never considered the struggles of being a blind father. Even I, who am not blind, struggle to communicate with children. It takes a lot of effort, especially since the vocalizations of children have little meaning. Therefor many children rely on hand gestures (like the pointing of Ryan’s daughter) to communicate. This is obviously an issue for the blind father. Not only that, but as Ryan mentioned, his daughter was only two years old when he began trying to explain his disorder to her. As a two year old, his daughter would have been in the preoperational stage of development – meaning that her thinking was primarily egocentric. This would make it impossible for her to put herself into her father’s shoes and understand what it what his world looks like (or does not look like). It was really compelling when she first understood that he was blind. Something about the way he described that was beautiful.
The thing that really upset me the most about this is that Ryan was not born blind, he simply lost his vision. The transition from being a sighted person to being blind seems like a huge obstacle to overcome. As an 18 year old, I find it utterly terrifying to consider that as a possibility for my future. There are so many things that I find beauty in observing. Perhaps that is one thing that I would like to ask a blind person: In what do you perceive beauty without vision?
TERMS: preoperational, egocentric
As I listened to these two guys that are blink talk I learned a lot about how difficult their lives can be sometimes. When the man who was in the hotel and couldn’t find the phone it was very intriguing that he had skipped over about eight feet of the wall several times. This makes me think about if you were in a mirror maze were you have to feel the walls to figure out where to move next. If you were to skip over a certain section of the mirrors you may never find the way you are supposed to be going. It also interests me that these people do struggle so much with these everyday activities that we take for granite. It would be very difficult to be in his situation. It’s almost like there is a secret door or passage way to another section of something that he doesn’t know about and can’t get the full experience from something. His talk helped me understand how important my sight is to be able to find things that are not so obvious like in his situation in the hotel room.
As the Dad had a younger daughter I could find that it would be very difficult to be the best parent possible until they realized completely about the fact that you can’t see. I feel like it would be very hard in certain situations like the one with the ball. I think if that was me I would get very upset at the fact that I could not really play with my daughter and it would be hard to interact with her. I would not like that I could not help that she was getting upset about certain things. I would also get very freaked out that since you don’t have that last sense you can’t always make connections to what someone is saying. In the situation where his daughter dropped her bear it was very hard for him to make that connection. It is almost like when someone is trying to talk to you when you have headphones one and can’t hear what they say. You lose that one sense and you can’t always make a connection to exactly what they are asking of you.
In the hotel room I can see how he thought he looked around the room because he thought he was at where he started. He does not know how many beds are in the room. I would be really frustrated especially if I was in the room like he was and I could not find a way out of the room. It would be frustrating not being able to find things. If I was in the part where they were walking I think I would kind of freak out. I would be scary to not see where the bear is.
What he went through just makes me thankful that I can see. I would not want to be blind. I don’t think there is really anything that I can compare from my life that would match what he went through. I guess one experience that is scary like the bear story is when my dad and I went to the Boundary Waters. Before we left with our group we knew that there was bears, but they did not eat people. So we were in our tent the first night and we were both asleep. My dad got up and heard this noise outside the tent and it sounded like a bear. He didn’t tell me this until we were back form the trip. I imagine my dad was pretty frightened hearing that outside a tent you cannot really do anything but stay in the tent. You are basically helpless. This is kind of like when Ryan was in the parking lot he was helpless.
I thought people who were blind could not see at all. This is not the case because Ryan says that he could still see things, but they are very blurry. His eyes get a sensation form the world but his brain does not perceive it well. Ryan’s other senses are supposed to be better than usual. His absolute threshold is better for other senses and so is his difference threshold. Since his eyes really cannot transduce information the rest are better. When he was in the hotel room he used localization to find the phone. Everyone would use this to find the phone, but then we would use our eyes to find the phone. Because Ryan cannot see the phone his localization is what he uses to find the phone so it has to be better than normal so he can find the phone.
Transduce, localization, sensation, perceive, absolute threshold, difference threshold
I initially felt badly for this man. I could not imagine what it would be like to go blind at my age. It is something that nearly everyone takes for granted. I complain about my eyesight sometimes, and I am still able to see with assistance from glasses/contacts. The thought of having to go someplace foreign and search around this unknown place for something is almost scary. I find it hard to look around in the dark for something in my own room. Without having any idea of the layout, the task immediately becomes more complicated. The way his brain receives signals is about the surrounding area is completely different compared to those with their sense of sight. To make up for the lack of sight, his other senses need to pick up the slack. From what I know, the majority of blind people have more sensitive ears. In other words, their sense of hearing is much more strong. He probably thinks differently too. His brain has to put together images of the room based on other senses. He may use touch to feel around like in the hotel or hearing to detect the size of the room. People are instantly judged based on their looks. It is something that no one can control, it just happens. Being blind would negate that. Physical appearance or phenotype is not something that they can pick up on without feeling. This is something that may be a positive in some ways. The blind would not have initial impressions before talking to someone they've never met. The thought of having to explain to a child that their father is blind is something that would scare me and puzzle me at the same time. How do you explain something like that to someone who has troubles grasping simple ideas? like a child in the preoperational stage and how they do not understand the theory of conservation. The kids are not able to wrap their minds around the idea that someone cannot see. It would also be hard to enjoy having your own child if blind. Not being able to see them and how their grow would honestly suck. Ryan from the podcast seems to understand how to make his way past that. He understands that he can rise past the disability, and still live life.
terms: senses, sight, hearing, touch, phenotype, preoperational stage
Alberto Sveum
I think the thought of being blind is obviously unattractive to someone who has had the capability of seeing throughout their whole life. If we are all born with the fear of the unknown, imagine what it is like to really have your entire life be unknown. Speaking from my point of view, I am so terrible at recalling details that I could never function as a blind person. I helped a guide a blind person once where I work at and they used the cane thing, she struggled with directions because my communication was so poor, “to the left here” etc. I have never really considered all that would be changed by the lack of sight. Besides it being challenging to get around safely, some interaction and communication would obviously suffer significantly.
I could see how children would struggle with this concept and I think it would be even harder if the child were blind. I cannot imagine what it would be like trying to explain the condition to someone who is blind. The man in the podcast was not born blind, so he might have a better picture of what is happening to him, but I think I would find the condition terrifying. If you were blind you would have to rely a lot more on other people and you would really lose a lot of independence, I think. You would require a lot of guidance and aid to do everyday things.
Another downfall to blindness would be the inability to appreciate simple scenery or any sort of pictorial display. The sensation gained from some visions or images can really be overwhelming. I often wonder what is the greatest understanding of color a blind person could gain. The entire condition really reminds me of Plato’s Allegory of The Cave because any blind person can only identify things by their other senses like hearing and touching. So many things are distinguished by the way they look. It would be terribly difficult to be blind, I believe. After hearing this story about the man struggling to find his surroundings, I hope more is done to cure this condition or help the blind see. I am also curious as to how the condition alters transduction, many conclusions and ideas can be made because of what we see, the blind would have to be unbelievably reliant on what are most people’s secondary senses.
Psychology terms: transduction, sensation
“when you are blind you can not assume anything” like they said in the radio. You have to be precise about everything. If you get something incorrect you live inside that error. You can not see anything so, you have to rely on your imagination and touch a lot. Through touch is how you would get around and know where the bed is at or where the door is at in his case. You would have to rely on your imagination a lot too, because you do not know what you look like, what your kids look like or what your house looks like.
This was an eye opener for me. A very simple thing like sight, this person do not have. You would not able to do little things like finding your phone, or your bed or the door. Which for us is a very simple task to do. He does have a changeling life trying to combine being a dad, a husband, having a job and on top of that he can not see.
Little things like playing ball with his daughter he can not do. It was eyeopening when they talked about the bare, but there was no bare, the daughter had dropped her teddy-bare. I could see how difficult it could be trying to explain your daughter about this disability.
Which for us seeing is a very simple task to do.
After listening to the Invisible Made Visible, I have realized I take my sight for granted. I would find it so difficult to not be able to find the phone in a hotel room like Ryan. The fact that he searched the room twice to try to find the phone and still couldn’t find it. And the fact that he just went to bed. I feel like I wouldn’t have the patience that he has. When I was listening to it I was getting impatient. And the fact that he couldn’t find the bed again, I couldn’t do it. I feel as if I would need someone with me at all times.
When he was talking about accidentally ignoring his daughter, it made me laugh. He has such a great sense of humor for what’s going on with his daughter. He is a great father to her and wanted her to understand what was going on when she was younger so badly. I laughed when he was talking about picking up his daughter from daycare and accidentally hug a little boy instead. Obviously you have to feel sorry for him because he couldn’t hear the ball that she kicked to him, or when she started saying “bear,” but he has a great sense of humor about all of it. The fact that a little word like ‘bear’ can terrify you so much because you can’t see is horrifying. I realized that I take my eyesight for granted and that we really aren’t thankful for it.
In my opinion I found his hotel situation to be extremely frustrating because he knew that there had to be a phone somewhere in that hotel room but he couldn’t find it because he couldn’t see. He described how he had to make a mental map of the room by using his pressure sensors (touching his surroundings) but his map was wrong due to there being more to the room than what he thought there was. Before he realized that there was another bed and coffee table it almost seemed like he thought someone was messing with him and put a phone in there later on and moved stuff around. He explained how this happens to him a lot and how if you mess up the mental layout of the room you have made you really have no choice other than to live with that mistake until you learn what was wrong. To find his way around he has to rely on his sense of touch to learn about his surroundings. During the story about him and his daughter in the parking lot when since he couldn’t visually look at his surroundings he had no idea if she meant that there was a real bear there or where it even was. That seemed to me that the loss of his sight makes him seem more vulnerable because he cannot protect himself or his daughter from something he cannot see. He also talked about how his daughter couldn’t related to him because she couldn’t comprehend that he couldn’t see due to her being in the preoperational period of her development giving her an egocentric view of the world and others. These situations that he described were very sad because he just couldn’t explain it to her, which did put some strain on their relationship when he didn’t kick a ball back to her or hugged the wrong child at daycare.
Most people take their eyesight for granted but when you lose it very simple tasks become rather complicated. Sight really drives how we use or other senses and live our lives. Not being able to see can put a strain on our social life and relationships with other as we heard from this mans experience where it would upset his daughter because he could not see what was happening around him and his daughter not being able to comprehend that he was blind. I have a lot of respect for those who are blind because they live a normal life without their sight and do things that we can do but are easier because we can see what is happening while they cannot. It is amazing how he can be self-sufficient and travel by himself even without being able to see where he is going. If I were to become blind I know life would become a very different experience for me. Those without the sense of sight rely greatly on stimuli for their other senses to perform everyday tasks.
After listening to this mans stories I could somewhat relate to him. In my own experience I am terribly near sighted so I need contacts and glasses to help the lenses in my eyes function correctly in everyday life. When I first noticed my vision was declining I actually was in baseball season and had terrible depth perception because of it so trying to catch a ball or hit a ball became extremely difficult when it was once easy. Another time during high school I actually lost one of my contacts so I took the other one out and had a hard time functioning without them. I could not take notes during class, didn’t recognize friends unless they were inches from me, and everything just looked different around me because they were just blobs of color. Sometimes when I have my contacts out at home or at night I will actually bump into things because I really cant see them or judge where they are. Sight is such an important sense because it allows us to be self-sufficient and easily perform tasks. I could not imagine my vision becoming worse or losing that sense all together.
Terms used: pressure sensors, preoperational period, egocentric, lens, sense, stimuli
This speech was very interesting to listen to. Ryan Knighton was an amazing speaker. He shares his experiences through the years of blindness. His experience of the night in the hotel was rather terrified. If I was him, not able to use my visual to look for things that I need, I will seriously freak out. I admire him for his calmness and his patient. It is hard for a person without visual to stay somewhere alone, and try to find things that don’t have sounds. For instance, he was looking for the phone, and it was already difficult for him in a place that he has never been to. Genuinely, people who has the ability to perceive or see things will be frighten. But he was calmly making sure that he senses all the possible place.
In Act I, he shares his experience with his daughter, Tess. Ryan does not have working pupil, rods, cones or lens, all they see is darkness. In the years of raising his daughter, he could never see what her face looks like, or when she needs something. He has to use his other senses to make up what he had lost in sight, like auditory perception, touch sensation and smell. It is already hard for some people to raise a child, but it is much more difficult for him.
Tess was still learning her motor skills, but with a blind father, it was rather difficult to her. Although she did not understand what blind was at such an early age, but her father actions and personality will somewhat affect her development as she goes through stages. The perception is one of the most important sensation of our body. Without it, all we see is darkness, just like how Ryan describe in the interview. He sees things just like when our eyes closed and his are opened. That is sadly to be heard from a blind person. I never knew or thought of how a blind person would think, but after listening to his interview, it was an eye opening for me.
His description make me feel really bad for people who has born with no sight or lost their sight by accident. They have to live their lives in darkness and could never see a light. They have to challenge themselves to live through each day. Every small task is rather difficult for them. I have read an article about blindness, and the research has shown that when people lost their sight, they tend to have a hard time accepting it. It is very easy for a blind person to be in a depressing mood because they feel useless all the time. I personally really respect those who had lost their sight, but are still doing well in their life.
Terms: perception, motor skill, sensation, development, auditory perception, touch sensation.
This episode of This American Life was very interesting to listen to. In the prologue and Act 1 of Invisible Made Visible shares the story of Ryan Knighton and his life after becoming blind at 18 years old.
As we learned, the light waves enter your eye through the cornea where the light waves bend into a narrow beam. The light wave then travels through the pupil and into the lens, and in the retina. In the retina, the rods, which help us see dim lights, and the cones, which help is see colors, lead us into transduction. When a person is blind, there can be damage in any part of the eye or to the primary visual cortex, which is where nerve impulses transform into visual sensations. After I understood the whole process of how we see things, I couldn’t help but think about how different life would be without any of that happening and seeing basically what I see when I sleep.
One thing that stuck out to me was how strange it would be for him to know what most things in the world look like from past experiences, but getting that privilege taken from him. Yet, he still has such a positive outlook on life and how he shares his somewhat embarrassing stories that made me actually laugh with the audience. For example, when he shared the story of his little girl getting mad at him because he didn’t kick the Nerf ball back to her, only because he couldn’t hear it but she couldn’t understand that. My favorite part was when he first tried to explain his blindness to his 2-year-old daughter by saying, “Papa sees what you see, when you close your eyes, but mine are open.” Which is a difficult sentence to understand even for me, let alone a 2 year old. She finally understood after the scene at the kitchen table where he asked her to pass him a cookie and he reached in the air and missed, and she says, “Papa doesn’t see!” I could only imagining how relieving that moment would have been for him.
Even the simplest of tasks that we take for granted he struggles with everyday, for example, finding the telephone in a hotel room. He checked on the 2 nightstands, the desk, the coffee table, and the couch and he even felt around every wall in the room, or so he thought. He soon realized there was a whole different section in the room he never realized was there because he assumed the wall ended, which he said was his biggest mistake because blind people can’t assume anything. Even last night before I went to bed, it was completely dark and I was trying to find my phone charger and ended up knocking it down. Living in a world that looks black is a concept I can’t even wrap my head around, but he learned to live with it and live a life as “normal” as possible.
The psychological terms I used were: light waves, cornea, pupil, lens, retina, rods, cones, transduction, primary visual cortex, nerve impulses, and visual sensations
After listening to this radio show, I gained a clearer understanding of what it is like to be blind. While Ryan, the man who is blind, was talking about his experience in the hotel room, I felt so incredibly sorry for him. I know that the reason he talked about his experiences wasn’t to make people feel bad for him, but for some reason I couldn’t shake the sick feeling in my stomach that I got from listening to this blind man speak. He didn’t start going blind until he was 18, which means he knew exactly what it was like to be able to see. Eventually over time, his sense of sight was just taken from him. When I think about a person being blind, I usually assume that they have been blind all of their life, when in fact, many people are born with sight, and slowly become blind. This, to me, sounds like torture. As awful as it sounds, if I were to be blind, I would much rather be born blind. I can’t imagine not being able to see, much less having my sense of sight and slowly losing it. When Ryan first started talking about his experience in the hotel room, I thought that someone was playing a joke on him. The only thing he wanted to do was call his wife, but couldn’t find the phone. He swore that he searched everywhere for the telephone, but still couldn’t find it. He eventually gave up because he got frustrated, and went to bed without calling his wife. The next morning he woke up to a phone ringing, and tried to follow the sound of the phone. He finds the phone on the same coffee table that he swears he searched thoroughly. This was when I started to think that someone was messing with him. After talking to his wife, he tries to make his way back to the bed and realizes that where the bed should be, is now a wall. At this point, he is obviously confused. He describes it as “funny and also sort of terrifying.” He starts trying to feel for things to figure out where he is, and then he realizes that there is a part of the room on the side of the bed that he didn’t discover the night before. I was relieved to know that someone wasn’t playing a cruel joke on him, but also very sad to think about how difficult simple tasks can be for him, like finding the phone in a hotel room. After Ryan talks about his hotel room experience, he talks about what it is like to be a blind father. He talked mainly about the miscommunications that took place between him and his daughter and said that sometimes he feels like a failure of a father. He tried to explain to her what it meant to be blind, and he could never get her to understand. He even tried to put it in her words by saying “Papa sees what you see when you close your eyes, but mine are open.” Still, she didn’t understand. He went on about the hardships of being a blind father, and explained how little things that normal fathers can do, he can’t. Such as kicking a ball back to his daughter, running to her at daycare to give her a hug, understanding that she dropped her teddy bear. All of this relates to the chapter in our book about senses and perceptions. Ryan, unlike most people, doesn’t have his sensory element of sight, which means his brain can’t further process the information, which is known as perception. With this being said, when it comes to Ryan’s sense of sight, he doesn’t have signal detection theory. The theory suggests that detecting sensory input, or signal, requires a person to find a response. Since he doesn’t have the ability to see, he often doesn’t know how to respond to certain situations. He explained the situation with his daughter while they were in the mountains. She yelled out, “bear” and he thought that there was a bear, so he began to run from it, when in fact, there was no bear. His daughter simply dropped her teddy bear. This is a perfect example of how his responses aren’t always accurate. Most of the time, we don’t think about how lucky we are to be able to see, smell, hear, and taste things in our everyday life, but listening to this radio show made me realize that not everyone has the privilege to use all of their senses.
Terms: blindness, senses, sensory element, signal detection theory, perception, response, signals,
When I was listening to the show, it amazed me that he was blind. The way he described how he got around, which he would have to picture the room in his head to find his way around. If he did not feel the "right way" then he would be lost. His sense of perception is based on his sense of touch and memory of his "blueprint" of the room. He explained multiple times how he would think he was going the right way and feel around, but nothing was there. That had happened to him in both his bedroom and the kitchen when he could not find his bed, or phone in those separate times. The part that I found to be more sensitive to talk about was when he tried explaining being blind to his daughter. "I see what you see" was what he told his daughter, and to me that was just a touching moment. Also how he told the time he went to go get his daughter from daycare and he heard his daughter yell: "Papa," but it was from the other side of the room and he was being hugged by some other kid. It just seems like it is a difficult time being blind for both loved ones and yourself. This radio show does a good job explaining problems and solutions to problems that many people have had to deal with and it is a great thing.
Terms: Senses, Touch, Blind, Perception, and Memory.
In this interview, I got to hear a man named Ryan Knighton, who has been blind since age eighteen, talk about what it is really like to not be able to see. In the prologue he talked about a time that he got lost in a hotel room after misjudging the room’s layout. Later in Act I he recounted several incidents with his toddler daughter and his attempts to explain to her that he was blind. He revealed how before she understood that “daddy can’t see” he felt helpless as her father and protector, especially since little kids rely on communicated by sight and pointing. He no longer seems bitter about his condition, but he did mention that he sometimes feels invisible to the rest of the visible world, like he has somehow been disconnected from everything he once knew.
After listening to his stories, I got to try to imagine what it would be like to be blind. This idea was already extremely frightening, but I never really considered how it would affect my relationship with others and the way I lived in the world. Every day you would have to check out your surroundings and try to map them out in your head. But if your map ends up being wrong you can become completely lost, like Knighton, in something as simple as a hotel room. Every new place would present frightening, new challenges when all you really want to do is call your friend on the phone and fall asleep. We rely heavily on sight, and the thought of it being taken away one day is very terrifying. But Knighton pushed through by learning to use his other senses such as audition, or hearing. When trying to find the ringing phone or his crying child, he used his ears to follow the sound. Another sense he has begun to rely on is olfaction, or smell. For example, when he was frantically searching for the “bear” he tried to smell where it was located so he would know to run the other way. And the last sense he has to rely on is touch through his pressure receptors. As a blind person, he has to feel his way around a new area so he can picture the surroundings. He feels up and along the walls, runs his hands all over the furniture and shuffles his feet slowly just so he can get the picture of a single room.
Knighton’s story helped me to better understand the sighted versus the unsighted world. Being able to see is something we take for granted, and we never can truly understand what it would be like to go through what he did. He was able to see for the first eighteen years of his life, and for it to be just taken away one day had to be indescribably traumatic. His entire way of life changed in an instance, making him feel lost and invisible to the outside world. He probably felt lost in the places he spent his entire life, felt disconnected from others for he could only hear and feel them, felt apprehensive whenever anything was handed to him, and felt hopeless as he walked down the street and became lost in the overwhelming noise. I do not know what it is like to be born blind or to lose one’s eyesight, but listening to him explain what his life is like now can help me to better understand blindness and better appreciate the eyesight I have.
Blind, sight, senses, audition, olfaction, smell, touch, pressure receptors
After listening to this radio post, it made me really think about how fortunate I am, and how I really should not take my eyesight and my life for granted. Something that really stood out to me during this post was a part that said that his blindness wasn’t the bad thing, it’s how bad he felt ashamed and embarrassed of being blind. He got lost and in everyday activities, which made him feel embarrassed, and he hated that. That just made me feel so bad inside. Because there really is nothing he can do, no matter hard he tries, so he should have no reason to be embarrassed, but it just happens. But I also think that it is scary of how easy people that are blind can get lost in everyday places, like the hotel room, for example. Obviously nothing really bad is going to happen in a hotel room, and he knew that. But if he was walking alone somewhere and got lost, then what would he do? It’s moments like those that I think would be the scariest part about being blind. We all take for granted of how easy we have life since we can go anywhere we want to without any problem at all. People that are blind live in a whole different world than we do. The part in this episode where he was with his daughter was also sad, I thought. Because since his daughter was so small, she didn’t know what was going on and why her dad was ignoring her. But he didn’t know he was ignoring her, it wasn’t his fault. It would take a long time for him to teach his daughter about how he is blind, and why he is hugging random children that is not her. After listening to his different stories that have happened in his life, it really made me feel grateful that I still have all of my senses, but it also made me feel guilty because I take it for granted. I think we take things for granted because we don’t have the slightest clue what it would be like otherwise. Like I could not even imagine losing one of my senses, because I’m so used to having them. But since Ryan lost one of his senses at such a young age of 18, I could not even imagine having a different perception on things in the middle of my life and what a big adjustment he would have to go through. But it makes me curious as to why people like Ryan just go blind over time as they age. Like maybe a disease happened in the brain in a part like the thalamus, which is where most of the processing goes to when it comes from the eyes. Or maybe parts in the eyes just went wrong like the lens, retina, rods, or cones, for example. But all together, this radio post did change my insight on how lucky we are and how easy we have it in our everyday lives
Terms: blindness, senses, perception, thalamus, lens, retina, rods, cones
In the hotel room it’s a whole new territory for this man. After arriving at the hotel he wants to call his wife to let him know that he has arrived. He keeps searching and searching and can’t find the telephone anywhere. Going from table to table and even feels the wall and looks in the bathroom and can’t find anything. Finally deciding to give up he went to bed. The next morning, he woke up to the sound of a phone ringing. After hanging up he gets disoriented and lost within the hotel room because he can’t find the bed anywhere. What he didn’t do was go all the way around the room and touch wall to wall and was backwards. He describes a new environment as being in first person in a video game where you discover new things by touching you. He also says that being blind you can’t assume anything. You have to build a mental map within your mind to remember where specific things are around you. It’s not being blind is the problem; it’s the embarrassment that comes with it when you make a mistake that hold you back.
He had to explain to his daughter that he’s blind and what life is like when you’re blind. In one instance his daughter wanted him to play ball with her but her father couldn’t hear the ball. She thought that her father didn’t want to play with her, but in reality he just didn’t see or hear the ball going by him. In another case he went to pick up his daughter from daycare and had bent down to hug her but instead of hugging his daughter, he accidently another child at the daycare and seeing that had broken his daughter’s heart. All of these miscommunications caused small heartbreaks from his daughter because she didn’t understand that her dad couldn’t see. It wasn’t just small miscommunications with his daughter, but there were a few dangerous ones too. His daughter had kept saying bear, bear! And he had freaked when a little while later he had realized that she had lost her teddy bear. As his daughter got a little older, it finally clicked for her that her father couldn’t see at the age of three.
After listening to the This American Life episode, there were many things that went through my mind. Because a blind person’s eye is not able to sense anything around them, the ganglion cells have nothing to receive and have nothing to fire action. They are unable to see color so their eyes wouldn’t be able to interpret the wavelengths, brightness, or amplitude. After listening to these guys talk, it made me think about how lucky I am that I am able to see to see the world around me. I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself if I couldn’t see. I always wonder what it would be like if someone were to descried the world around me if I couldn’t see. I have so much respect for those who are blind and go on with their life and don’t let it hold them back, they just keep pushing forward. After listening to him speak, my understanding of the sighted vs. unsighted world changed. The idea of having no mental map to where things are or how every day you could walk in to a new place where you’re completely lost. You would have to constantly depend on your others senses to guide you through the day. Everyday things that seem easy for us could be a struggle for them.
Terms: ganglion cells, wavelengths, brightness, amplitude,
Currently being a 19 year old, I couldn’t imagine going blind at age 18 like Ryan did. He had to change his whole world and relearn how to do everything. Nothing is visible until he touches it. The experience Ryan had in the hotel room by not being able to find the phone to call his wife had to be extremely frustrating. A simple task he was unable to do all because he miss judged one wall. I did however think it was pretty funny that he woke up to the phone ringing the next morning. Ryan had a good sense of humor about it, which probably isn’t easy to have. Also, explaining to your two-year-old daughter that her father is blind would be very hard. I would hate not being able to play simple games with my children all because I couldn’t see a simple ball. Everyday experiences were a challenge for him. He even hugged the wrong kid at daycare! Being blind complicates a lot of things. Having his daughter say the simple word bear from dropping her teddy bear on the ground, can lead to him thinking his life was in danger. It broke my heart when the daughter finally realized that her dad was blind by saying, “Papa doesn’t see.” However, for Ryan it was a relief because she finally understood what he was trying to explain to her all along.
His experiences make me think about how lucky I am to not have to face those challenges everyday. When you are blind you can’t assume anything, unlike the sighted world. Ryan had to adapt to a whole new way of life. It also makes me think about how much I (and many others) take for granted life’s everyday beauty Ryan no longer sees. Not only being unable to see the world, but also his daughter changing and growing up. As we develop we really rely heavily on our sight. Ryan changed my perspective of the sighted vs. unsighted world because for him being blind he had to completely rely on his other senses to live. Everyone can relate to this by trying to find something in the dark, and slowly moving around trying to find it. In the hotel room he used his pressure receptors to figure out the room and auditory perception to find the phone when it finally went off the next morning. In the sighted world we could have just seen the phone when we wanted it. He had tried to smell if there was a bear or not (even though he had no idea what a bear smelled like), where normally we can just look. These new senses are now becoming natural to Ryan because his body is developing and adapting a new way to live. This is just another example of how amazing our bodies are when changes occur.
From listening to this show, it really made me think about my grandmother and how she is starting to lose her vision. She loves to read, but no longer can without a magnifying glass. Pretty soon she will no longer be able to drive, because they do not make glasses strong enough for her eyes. She gets so frustrated not being able to do the things she once loved doing. She also hates asking for help, but in order for her to do certain tasks, she has to. Like Ryan, blindness isn’t always the main problem, embarrassment sometime is.
Psychological Terms: auditory perception, pressure receptors, senses, development, adaption
The man has to use his heat receptors to find his daughter’s arm and follows to where her finger was pointing. He also uses his auditory system which lead him finally to understand that she had dropped her toy bear. He also uses the sense of smell, the olfactory system, to see if he could get a direction to where the bear wa. Even though the daughter simple just dropped her toy bear, he struggled to grasp the concept.
People always say that we live a pretty good life. After watching this episode, it made me truly realize that my life isn’t so bad after. I mean we all can have bad days, but I could never imagine being in a life and not being able to see anything. This episode made me feel really sad for those who are currently suffering from blindness. Just the way the man described his journey to find the phone is crazy! Most of us are used to just walking across the room, picking up the phone, and returning back to the original place to be seated. However, the guy from the episode struggled a great amount to answer the phone. He described how has to create his own “image” in his mind, while he is using his pressure receptors. He really goes in depth of how much he has to feel things up. That sounds bad in some cases, but he really wants to understand what the different objects are. It made me realize how dangerous it is to be blind. The guy would run into things simply because he can’t see anything. First of all it would take me a long time to accept that fact that I would be blind. Second of all, it would scare me the most because I would constantly be asking where I was. Can you imagine trying to find something in a grocery store. Or what if you weren’t married/had a significant other, trying to keep up a house. I would never survive being blind! When man said that “Nothing is visible until I touch it” was a strong statement that stuck to me. This statement stuck out to me because again we take eyesight for granted!
Discuss your insight, perspective and thoughts you have from listening to this show.
I thought that it was shocking to learn that some people have perfectly good eyes, but their brain didn’t develop in the optic area. Simply this means that the person may be able to have a few sensations, but there is no perception or transduction. Our senses are all a result from our brains interpreting the signals that our bodies are sending to it
Psychology terms: Pressure receptors, heat receptors, auditory system, olfactory system, Transduction, perception, Blind
All I could think about while listening to this man, Ryan, talk about being blind and how he went around the hotel room to get familiar with it, was how frustrating that would be. He could not find the telephone because he searched the table for a long time trying to find it, but could not. Then he heard a phone ring, and it was his wife. If I was him I would feel so disoriented because you can not see anything, and you are walking around the room trying to find the phone or the bed, and then figure out the next day that there is two side tables and not just one. He had to reevaluate what he thought the room looked like after that.
These experiences make me realize that I take my eye sight for granted. I could never imagine going through life not seeing anything anymore, and seeing nothing, but complete darkness. I would be so frustrated all the time because you would have to take the time to recognize all of your surroundings, and memorize it. Ryan talks about how he went to pick up his daughter from day care and how he thought he was hugging her, but was actually hugging another little boy. His daughter was so upset because he was hugging another little boy. Ryan probably felt so bad about making his daughter upset, and it would be kind of frustrating because his daughter is too young to understand what being blind really means.
When he was telling his story about his daughter saying “bear” and not being able to see, so you think the most worst possible thing ever, and think there really is a bear, but turns out she actually dropped her teddy bear would also be kind of frustrating.
The best possible way I can explain or what I think being blind would feel like is frustrating.
After listening to this prologue, I am so very, very thankful to have the ability to see. I would not want to go through life not being able to see who I am going to marry, what I am eating for sure, what my children are going to look like, or what color of house I’ll be living in.
I read a book about a boy that got ocular cancer, and couldn’t see anymore. He had to change so much about how he was doing things, and relearn a lot of things like making sure he didn’t run into anything while walking, learn how to use a “white cane”, which is what they use to walk with, and he had to get used to being in the complete dark for the rest of his life.
After listening to this I will no longer take my eye sight for granted, and be more thankful for it.
Terms Used: ocular,
Listening to the Prologue and Act 1 of This American life episode #464 called invisible made visible you can understand how frustrating and worrisome it must be to not be able to see. While the blind guy walks around a hotel room scanning it using his hands to feel around he isn’t able to find the telephone anywhere to call his wife. I would imagine in the state and event that’s taken place he is in deep stress and anxiety. The only thing he really trusts is his hand that I would imagine have developed greater stimuli while touching objects. Being lost is one thing but being lost and blind is another. Confusion and discomfort runs through the guy’s head, as he doesn’t understand where everything is laid out across the room. The guy’s perception in his mind is perfect but in reality it’s all in different order. When the guys at home sitting on the floor attempting to play with his baby daughter she gets very frustrated. The little girls are playing catch with her father but the father is blind. Once the girl throws the ball that is soft and light to her father there is no movement from him. This discomforts the girl because he isn’t responding to her. He didn’t understand why she was upset until he found the ball and it was light to the touch. He wasn’t able to hear the ball land on the ground because it was so light and that’s his only way of sensing that the ball was near him. Adapting to this new world would be a difficult journey for anyone. The descriptions he was explaining in his events were all of his other senses his touch, hearing, and smell. The way I would understand life as being blind is anxiety, depression, and stress 24/7.
Terms: anxiety, confusion, stimuli, perception, depression
The first thing that I think about when I listen to the stories this guy tells; is how much I take my sight for granted. I wake up and hate getting out of bed but I bet this guy would love to be able to open his eyes and see another day. Just walking around my house and seeing all of the beauties of this world are all things that we take for granted. I feel like it would be harder for a person to go blind then it would be for a person who was born so. I say this because you once saw the world and then it’s gone; never to be seen again. I cringe at just the thought of that. He can never see his daughter or wife’s faces and that would be; in my opinion, the worst part. I found it funny when he was telling the story about the “bear” when he said that he smelled for the bear. This was funny because it was a weird sense to use to notice something around you. Like if it was me in that situation I wouldn’t be like, “Oh wait, let me smell real quick.” I’d be running if I could see a real bear and pick up the teddy bear if that was the case. But, being blind he could not make that connection right away so he had to smell. And often when you go blind your other senses become stronger to balance out the loss of sight. Thus his transduction process is more reliant on your other sensations such as touch, smell, hearing and taste. I think this would suck because your perception on things can be completely wrong. Such as the hotel rooms or the bear incidents. You can think that there is a real live bear there when your daughter means she dropped her teddy bear. This is a huge difference that anyone with sight would not have to even think about; but to a blind person, this is a huge obstacle and potentially deadly. I can NOT imagine what it would be like to be blind and I hope that I never have to find out what it’s like.
The psychological terms I used were; senses, transduction, perception, sensation.
to start out, I would like to summarize the events of the recording. The interviewer, Ira, interviews a man named Ryan. he is blind and tells about his experience with trying to explain to his daughter that he is blind. Ryan tells about him writing a personal memoir, Cockyard, in which he talks about his daughter and her finding out about Ryan being blind, as well as him growing up with blindness.
He began going blind at the age of eighteen. This would be a very disturbing and frightening experience, in my opinion. If I were to go blind after seeing for eighteen years, I would not know how to react, other than cry and become very depressed. Ryan then explains how he was in a hotel room and was trying to find the hotel room phone to call his wife. He wandered the entire room, touching everything except the phone. He finally decided to give up and go to sleep, later being woken up by his wife calling him from the hotel room phone to ask why he didn’t call.
The first incident that occurred with his daughter was during an experience with a bear. His daughter screamed “bear” but he hear “there” so he didn’t know what was going on until his daughter made him run. The second incident was with Ryan trying to hug his daughter, but actually ended up hugging young boy that he did not know. When his daughter finally realized that he was blind was during dinner and Ryan’s daughter was trying to pass him biscuit but he couldn’t see them. Ryan then explained to her that “daddy can’t see”, letting her know that he was not able to see the biscuits.
This would be a very difficult thing to experience; trying to tell your child that you will never get to see them grow up in to beautiful individuals would be a rather depressing realization for the child and the parent as well. The type of psychological impact would be immense, with no visual representation of anyone or anything.
After listening to the man who was blind it really made me think about how life would be if we could not see. I can only imagine what it would be like to be blind. As we all know every hotel room is different but it is easier for us to adapt to them because we can see. While this man cannot see it is hard for him because he can’t adapt to the differences. It really opened up my mind to how difficult this would be because I can only imagine being able to see where I am going and knowing where everything is at. I would assume going into a room and feeling like you have checked the whole room and there being no phone there, then to hear a ringing the next morning would be quite terrifying. Also, if you had gotten up to get the phone and think your bed went missing that would be horrific.
Not being able to feel the sensation of who his daughter is when picking her up from school would be hard for him as a parent. He was holding his arms out waiting for his little girl to jump in them. He realized when someone did it wasn’t her because she was screaming his name across the room. It could be very uncomforting not knowing exactly who you are talking to without putting a face to them. When I talk to people I can get a feeling of how the person is doing from their facial expressions which allows me to understand them better. Talking to a person without knowing what they look like or seeing what expressions they are showing.
Being blind would be a very challenge thing to do because you have to make up your own perception of the way things are such as rooms and you will never be sure. You will also never have a face with a name. You would only have to put voices to names and I can only imagine how challenging that would be to do. Adjusting like he did would have to be a difficult thing to endure because of the age he got it. Growing up seeing then not being able to see would be a scary thing because you can’t see all the wonderful things you used to.
Key Terms: sensation, perception
When I was younger I actually wondered what it was like to be blind a lot. Actually to lose any of the senses completely for that matter. I never had a blind friend that I could talk to see what his or her experience was, and my family never owned a computer. I ended up just closing my eyes for long periods of time just to put myself in a blind person’s shoes. My memory of these experiences are a little faded, but the biggest emotion I remember was frustration. Unlike the man in the podcast who felt embarrassed I got mad at myself for not knowing where things were. That is due to the fact that my little experiments were done alone most of the time. I also remember that I would make little maps of the area I was in from my perception of the room. I now realize that my maps were products of top-down processing because I always did it in my house and had a mental framework of the entire building. Reminiscing about my child hood shenanigans and hear this man’s tale about the hotel room have really made me thankful for my sight. I couldn’t imagine trying to do this whole college thing, with as many challenges it brings, while not being able to see a single thing. I’ll have to thank my parents next time I talk to them for the sufficient genetics they passed down to me. I enjoyed the part where he said to his daughter, “I see what you see when you close your eyes, but mine are open.” I being the hippie guy and nerd that I am immediately thought of this dude as some type of superhuman with a six sense and an open third eye. I actually had to pause the podcast to ponder this dude and ended up thinking myself into an out loud laugh. My roommate thought it was crazy that someone could have a little bit of fun while doing homework. The story of the soccer ball was interesting too. That poor little girl not yet into formal operations cannot even fathom her father’s condition. The ball might have even touched his foot as it rolled by, but not cross the absolute threshold. So that little girl could have just thought that her dad didn’t have any interest in play with her. Along with the whole college thing it is hard for me to imagine being a father without sight. What happens when the two are alone, and something very bad happens? Does he just call for help as quickly as he can? I don’t see how he could do much else in his condition. In the situation with the bear it was interesting to me how he smelled for the bear. I have always wondered if the old legend was true. The one that if you lose a sense of sensation that your other four would be somehow strengthen. If that is true I would love to have super taste. I love hot food, but have eaten so many extremely hot things that I can’t actually see that my taste buds have been dying off. So I have to buy even hotter sauces online, most of which are fairly expensive. It would be nice not to have to do that and go back to having normal taste.
terms:perception, down processing, genetics, formal operations, absolute threshold
After listening to this radio talk show it really lead me to a new way of thinking and how lucky I am. Everyday I go through life taking my vision for granted when there are people in the world that will never be able to experience that. Although, these stories are very interesting and amussing, I cant imagine the impact it has on their lives and the lives of their loved ones. When the guy in the hotel room can’t find the telephone at first I just thought that there just wasn’t one in the room. But the next day when he wake ups to the telephone ringing I freaked out myself thinking there was someone else in the room that was trying to mess with him. Later to find out he just didn’t discover the whole room. His expectations were wrong because he was using top-down processing where you process information that is based on previous knowledge and experiences. Although this would be very difficult for him it just doesn’t hurt him but his wife and probably all the worry she went through. As I think about what happened to him, I realize how much different blind people have to visualize and take circumstances ina a different way. Without the retina, cones, and rods, which allow sensation of light waves, these bind people have to learn to life differently. For example, the blind guy with the young daughter had to think in a completely different way to understand his daughter and be able to communicate with her. His perception with what he thought was a bear and what bear his daughter was talking about were making them misunderstand one another. Since he was using bottom-up processing, which is the processing of information that is based on the properties of the stimulus in the world, he thought it was an actual, living bear since he was in the woods in Canada. Although, it would be hard life living blind it tends to increase the stimuli in our other senses. That is why when he thought there was an actual bear he tried to smell for it because he knew his other senses worked better because one of his senses did not work.
Key words: retina, cones, rods, perception, top-down processing, bottom-up processing
In the past few years I have been abusing my eyes and I am currently still is, and caused my vision to blurred by wearing non-prescription contact lenses without asking our talk to my eye doctor’s permission or advice. From listen to this radio blog I feel so bad for Ryan because of his blindness, it just make his life more stressful and hard. My mom did not like what I was doing with my eyes, she kept telling me to close my eyes walking or doing something for a moment to see how it feel, and I tried several times it felt so much uncomfortable compare to when you can see things. His descriptions of what it is like to be blind changed my understanding of the sighted and unsighted world. Due to the fact that when you cannot see thing you will get annoy. For example, you and your friends playing game when you are blinded folded and try to catch them, it nearly impossible because then can see and run away while you are there trying to catch them and all you can see is a pitch black image. The person in the radio with his daughter walking to school when she keep saying bear was kind of in a panic mode because he could not see what is happening around him. Also the story of Ryan tried to find his phone make me think how important vision is, and same as others senses. Since his sight is no use so is his lens can help him adjust and focus, his sensory receptor in retina is useless, rods can detect light wave, cones cannot give any color so they are no use as well. Trying to crawl around in the darkness to reach for his phone by using another sense as he touching every object in the room to find the phone and then gave up. By the next morning through the vibration of his eardrum he was able to hear the phone ringing, and followed to the sound of the phone he is now able to find it. It would be easier for him if he was born as blind, in my opinion, because when people growing up with vision and suddenly they can see anymore it is just give them more anxiety.
Terms: eardrum, cones, lens, anxiety, retina, rods
The experiences shared by Ryan Knighton about how he deals with his everyday life as being a blind man and getting lost in his own hotel rooms, to his cute funny stories with his daughter. They were very amusing but at the same time it did get me thinking about how fortunate I am to be able to see everything I see. For me, not being able to see and not knowing something is in the room without feeling it first would be so frustrating for me. I didn’t really think about it before, but when we see we are taking in so much information with little to know effort when Mr. Knighton has to Marcel Marceauing walls and groping furniture just to find a phone. If I were in that very same room it wouldn’t have taken me more than five seconds to find the phone and make a call. How Mr. Knighton describes in detail about what it is like to be blind for him changed how I viewed sighted vs unsighted world. Before I got to listen to his talk I viewed blindness as a depressing handicap. But Mr. Knighton, through his telling of his every day to day life, though it was difficult at times I’m sure, on his radio talk he makes it seem that life as a blind person can still be enjoyable.
Morgan Sowers
Invisible Made Visible
When I was in elementary, my friends and I would play this weird little game called “would you rather” during lunch that described two situations we wouldn’t want to be in, but if we had to pick one, which one would it be. When it came to choosing between rich and ugly or poor and beautiful I could answer right away, but I always had a hard time answering one particular question: “Would you rather be blind or deaf?” I could never decide, and if asked the question right now I still couldn’t tell you my answer. But unlike the morbid questions my friends and I would ask each other when we were 7, the concept of being blind and/or deaf isn’t a hypothetical to a lot of people, and it certainly isn’t a choice. When I was young I always though of being blind as a disadvantage, and if I’m being honest part of me still does, but being blind doesn’t make somebody “less” somehow, it doesn’t define who they are, it just makes them different from me, like pretty much everybody else in the world. When I pressed play on “Invisible Made Visible” I had no idea what to expect and all of a sudden there was a man, Ryan Knighton, talking about how he got lost in a hotel room. One second I’m thinking, “wow, that’s horribly sad” and the next I’m actually laughing while I’m making my pasta (I’m a multi-tasker). A blind man that is living my 2nd grade nightmare not only has what seems to be an awesomely fulfilling life but a great sense of humor. By the time I was finished listening to the program I had such a huge amount of admiration for Ryan Knighton, a man I have never met and am likely to never meet. The idea of spending the first 18 years of my life one way and then having a drastic change, such as losing my eyesight, impact everything I have come to know would probably cripple me (at first, anyways). When he spoke about feeling like a failure for not seeing a ball his daughter had kicked to him my heart had a little bit of a twinge and when he talked about how he didn’t know how to tell her that he couldn’t see I had even more of a twinge going on in my chest, but he was laughing-and that’s what’s important. I did not use any psychology terms in my reflection.
I found it very confusing how the man got all of the room mixed up. It is really scary to lose your sight, and I could not imagine going through life not being able to see. It is weird to think that blindness was not actually the problem, the actual problem was the embarrassment of being blind. He was actually excited to tell his daughter that he was blind, to let her know that her father was blind. Sometimes he felt helpless as a father, but other times he would blame other things, rather than himself. It was frightening when his daughter said the word bear, while the father had no idea where the bear was. When his daughter finally figured out that he couldn't see, he was actually excited that she found out that he can't see. She was slowly learning how to cope with having a blind father, and that seemed to make him very happy. I thought it was actually a very powerful moment when his daughter took his hand and helped trace out the outline of what she saw on the television. If I were to be blind, I don't know how I would be able to cope, it's honestly a very scary thought. I panic sometimes when I wake up and there covers over my head and it feels like I am actually blind. The world is actually a hard place to navigate with no vision, it makes me think of just how dangerous the outside can actually be if you can't see where you are going. It definitely makes me grateful to have the vision I have now. I actually am blind, but not to the point where all I see is darkness. I have to wear glasses and I hope that's the worst that happens to my vision, I would honestly be scared to wake up without vision. I know that it was only one sensory receptor that was lost in this man's life, but even losing one sense could change anybody's life entirely. His daughter's perspective was entirely different when she dropped her teddy bear on the ground. The father thought his life could be over because he thought for a few seconds that there was an actual live bear behind him. A blind man's perspective of words in the world could be entirely different to a person with vision. If not worded correctly, the man would not be able to understand what is going on around the. The transduction that was happening when the man in the hotel was using his hands to feel the room was constantly changing, confusing his brain. The way he was describing the experience in the hotel, it felt like he was in a completely different world. Playing video games in my free time makes me so relaxed and at peace. Without my vision video games would be a thing of the past, almost nonexistent. I would be devastated to lose my sight, I love watching movies and TV shows. None of my visual experiences would ever be the same. Vision is just another thing in life most people take for granted in life, and others would kill to be able to see their daughter's grow up. After this podcast, I really do have more respect for the people who have to deal with this disability in their daily lives.
terms: perception, sensory receptors, vision, transduction
When I was little I would put a blanket around me, acting like a ghost, and walk around the house. I couldn’t much if anything so I had touch walls and be extra careful on the stair. I typically knocked over everything in my path. Then I didn’t think much of being blind, but being under the blanket was similar to it. You just feel lost in the world. Our perception changes drastically and our sensation would increase.
It would be so hard to be blind. Especially since this man, Ryan Knightonhad who we listened to in Invisible Made Visible had his sight and then was lost at the age of 18. It would be hard judging what something would be and what it wouldn’t be. Confusion wouldn’t even be able to start to describe what you would be like! You would have to be very detailed as you touch, smell, and hear things. I got so frustrated listening to him as he is in the hotel room looking around for his phone and it was right by him, but he just couldn’t tell. Little things that we take advantage of during the day, he can’t do because of his blindness.
Eyes are a team structure, like most things on our body. If every part of the eye works, life is good. However, if even one area of the eye isn’t working as great as it should be, you may not be able to see very well. If the lens aren’t working correctly then the vision won’t be as crisp. If the retina isn’t working correctly then the senses to light won’t be very good. The rods aren’t working, and then we won’t be able to see in the dark. My brother has problems with his rods and we have to walk around with him in the dark otherwise he will literally run into things. The cones are for seeing fine detail and color. If the cones are not working then wouldn’t be able to see in daytime very well or specific colors. If more than one are not working, the probability to blindness is greater. Eyes are very sensitive to many things.
Just like the eyes, the senses are a team too. They are a greater team in a way because if one of them collapses the others get stronger. The warm and cold receptors increase to things more because if we are blind we really can’t see if something is that hot or cold. Our scent increases so we are more aware of where we are going. Also, our taste buds increase because we aren’t exactly sure all the time what we are sticking into our mouths to eat when we are blind.
As he has to go through the situation of telling his daughter, it is very upsetting. She gets so sad when he can’t do things because of his blindness. As a young girl she couldn’t fathom what he meant. As she would tell her father things about her life like a ball or bear he obviously couldn’t see it so he would try to understand and she would get flustered. The incident with the bear is a little humorous. As his daughter says bear while they were in this forest field mountain area, the dad starts to worry. He thinks to himself how he doesn’t know exactly what to do and any direction he goes his daughter gets upset. Well it turns out she had dropped her stuffed bear and that’s why she got so upset when he would move because he would move away from the bear.
Vocab: Perception, sensation, cones, lens, retina, rods, warm receptors, cold receptors, and taste buds
This show made me realize how much I take sight for granted. When the man talked about not being able to find a phone in the hotel room, I was shocked. I never realize how much I rely on sight. It does remind me of an activity we had to do in our chemistry lab. We had to be able to get to the eyewash station, without being able to see. (The only reason you would need an eyewash station is because something is obstructing your vision.) We only had to walk ten feet to turn on the water, but it was really hard. Before I started, I tried to memorize where everything was so I could get to it. I was still relying on my sight and memory. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I had never seen the room before.
When the man described how his daughter acted before she knew he was blind, I almost wanted to cry. From my point of view, it’s easy to understand how his daughter could misunderstand things, but it is still hard to imagine feeling like you are disappointing your daughter and there is nothing you can do about it. I know that there are ways he makes up for losing his sight, like hearing or touching, but when it is a primary sense for most of the world, it still must be really tough. For example, when you are in an elevator, most times you only know what floor the elevator stopped on by the little number by the door. Usually, there is no voice saying, “Level 2” and if there is brail lettering, it’s not going to be the easiest thing to find, and you have to check what the floor is at every stop. In the unsighted nothing can be assumed, like assuming a hotel room is rectangular. The signal detection theory explains how our judgment affects our ability to detect input. To lose the ability to see, the judgment of everything would change and so would the ability to detect input.
Psychological terms: perception, senses, signal detection theory
For this blog we listened to episode number 464 of This American Life. It was called Invisible Made Visible. This episode really made me put my own vision into perspective. It kind of hit me with a reality check. Vision isn’t permanent. There is no guarantee we will always have vision so we shouldn’t bring others down without it or take our own for granted.
The man in the hotel room, Ryan Knighton, had a very though time finding the phone. He tried so hard that when he couldn’t find it he simply assumed that there wasn’t one. He gave up and went to bed. He may have never of known that there even was a phone in the room if it wasn’t for the call he received from his wife. It would be really hard to live blind. Like the man in the episode said, you can’t assume anything when you are blind. When you assume things are in a certain place or get a certain image of a room in your head, you could be wrong. If you are wrong about something you won’t know so you just have to live in the mistake. I feel like being blind would be like a person with normal vision walking into a dark room after being in a bright room, except your eyes would never adjust to the light. You wouldn’t be able to see so you would be aimlessly roaming around using your sensory receptors and the transduction process. Normally the physical stimulus would be light waves reflecting from the image you see and pass through the cornea and enter the eye through the pupil. The sensation would then be when the light was detected in the retina by sensory receptors called rods and cones. The transduction process would be converting the waves into signals, and the perception occurring when the signals were processed. Without vision, the process is strictly physical.
The story between Ryan and his daughter made me a little sad. To feel useless as a father must be the worst feeling in the world. It must frustrate Ryan to know how his daughter feels. I’m sure it was a huge relief when his daughter finally began to realize that he couldn’t see. However, I did think that his story about the bear was funny and I’m glad that he has a sense of humor about his disability.
Being blind would no doubt be a challenge every day no matter how used to it you got. The fact that Ryan could see smears made me wonder if I would rather see smears or just be blind. On one hand, seeing smears would be helpful for navigating and other tasks. On the other hand, it would just be frustrating to not be able to see clearly. There are more people out there that are blind or legally blind than we are aware. As I feel bad for those people, it just makes me even more thankful that I have the quality of vision I do.
Terms Used: Sensory Receptors, Transduction, Perception, Lens, Cones, Rods, Retina
Listening to this episode was a very eye opening one. I never think “wow I’m so grateful that I can see.” Which I really should because listening to these people tell their stories about being blind I could just tell how difficult and frustrating it would make life. They don’t have retinas or cones so they can’t see color; all they are able to see is black. It’s sad to think that they have never seen the color red or yellow, they don’t even know when it looks like because how does one explain a color to someone who hasn’t ever seen a color.
The man who told the story about having to explain his blindness to his daughter was very sad to me, even though he made it somewhat humorous. He explained how difficult it was for his young daughter to grasp the concept of how her daddy could not see anything. She was still in the pre operational stage, she just couldn’t understand the concept. He told stories about how she would be rolling him balls or toys and he didn't even know it and she was very frustrated, and thought he was just ignoring her. He also told a story about going to pick her up at daycare and hugging another child thinking it was her. During these stories I was thinking about how this could be dangerous, especially with him having her by himself at times. Toddlers can be a handful, and then his very next story was about how his blindness can be dangerous. How he and his daughter were walking through a college campus in Canada one day and she said “bear” and then she kept repeating it and she again was becoming frustrated. His initial reaction was to think it was a real bear, and he had no idea where it was or what to do for that matter. It ended up just being that she dropped her teddy bear. But it got me thinking about if it really was a bear, how would he protect his daughter, let alone himself. A memorable day to him was when his daughter finally understood and said “daddy can’t see”. It would be a big relief, but also an emotion thing.
The stories of these people’s encounters and problems really opened my eyes to how much we use our vision. When these people didn’t have their vision they had to use other ways of basically making a metal map of the area they are in. For example the man in the hotel room had to use his touch receptors to feel all around the room and try to figure out where everything is. He told his stories about the struggles he has had with this process. One mistake can basically get him lost in a hotel room. His first statement was very blunt, he said, “blindness wasn’t the problem, it was the embarrassment.” It would be so frustrating and embarrassing not being about to find the door to get out of your own hotel room. For me, if I had this disability I wouldn’t want everyone’s help and aid I would want to try to do things on my own, which I’m sure is the case for most people.
It’s not hard to imagine what it would be like to be blind, but I never thought about all of the complications that come with it. It really made me thankful and realize how much we use our senses every second of the day. I also think blindness would be a very scary thing for me. If I couldn’t see what was going on around me every moment I would have constant wonders and thoughts running through my mind. Blindness would set back your life so much; and I feel like you would have to be very dependent of others, and it would definitely take a lot of time to adjust to if you weren’t born blind.
Words: Retina, cone, light, pre operational stage, receptors
The Prologue was about Ryan not being able to find the telephone in his hotel room. While I was listening to this, I was trying to put myself in his shoes. The thought of looking for something with my eyes closed is crazy. I cannot even fathom how people live everyday life like that. I really makes me feel thankful for how lucky I am to have no serious health issues like being blind. I think that if I were blind, I would be afraid to go anywhere alone. It would be so dangerous and terrifying to go places and see nothing but black. This reminds me of a dream I used to have a lot, but haven’t in a few years. I used to be leaving school, walking outside looking for my ride but couldn’t see anything, like I suddenly lost all my vision. I can still remember the sensation of the sunlight, but everything being dark. It was terrifying. Then I woke up and felt so relieved. It really makes me thankful that I can wake up from something like that, while other people actually live like that every day. Then Act one began and this one was about Ryan talking to his daughter, trying to help her understand his blindness. He tells the story about his daughter kicking a foam soccer ball at him, and he not kicking it back because he didn’t hear it so he had no idea. To think that his sensory receptors have no idea that a ball was just kicked to him, because it wasn’t loud enough to surpass the absolute threshold. So he had no idea why his daughter began to cry. All of the stories Ryan told about his daughter not understanding why he didn’t see and situations that occurred because of it, made me really sad. I think it is really great that he can laugh about it and make jokes, but putting myself in his shoes, never being able to see my daughter’s actual face is heartbreaking to even think about. Although I am sure Ryan has had his fair share of hard times dealing with his blindness, I still cannot even fathom what that would be like. Listening to this makes me wonder how often blindness occurs, and why it happens. Just after looking at this chapter in the book, I would make a guess and think that something was wrong with the lens in their eyes, just because I know the lens is responsible for focusing the light to view things correctly. Also, it says that glasses and contacts work by helping the lens bend the light correctly, and knowing that I cannot see well at all without contacts or glasses, maybe this is what causes blindness often. My second guess would be that there is a problem with the retina because we know that is detects the light waves. We also know the retina contains the rods and cones which convert light waves into signals and then send them to the brain. Regardless of why people are blind, I definitely feel a whole lot luckier with the eyes I have been given, even if I don’t have perfect vision.
Terms: sensation, sensory receptors, absolute threshold, lens, retina, rods, cones
After listening to this radio show, it really occurred to me that not everyone’s life is as easy as mine. Don’t get me wrong, I have my own problems, but when I think about all the things I do with such ease, like crawling into bed at night without having to search and find it or even seeing things as simple as a phone so I can use it, is astounding to me and unless you have someone who is blind that is close to you, it is easy to forget about the struggles they endure. The guy in the hotel room had a hard time just figuring out where he was within that very room and he struggled to do simple tasks like calling his wife or even just going to bed. He had to search for things to identify where he was and imagine where everything else was in relation to that current object. He thought he knew the room inside and out but he soon found out that that wasn’t the case when both the phone and his bed had “disappeared”. He had to reevaluate the room he had in his head and recreate it into what it actually was. The guy also had troubles relating to his daughter and getting her to understand that he was blind and because of that that put a strain on his relationship with her. It’s saddening to hear that he doesn’t have the bond or relationship with his daughter that he would like and likely deserves because of his impairment. Like I said earlier, it is a lot tougher than I would have ever thought about and I’m glad that I see as well as I do. It truly is a gift to be able to see! I could not imagine not being able to see the faces of my family, the pretty views of the beaches or mountains, or even not seeing my own face. The blind world and the seeing world are two very different things and the seeing and the blind both have good and bad aspects of their situation. After this show I also reevaluated how I viewed my own world. I imagine most people don’t stop to look at the pretty flower on the side of the road or the magnificent sunset before dark and this show reminded me that it is okay to stop every once in a while and take the view in because not everyone gets that chance. The Psychology terms I used were imagine, sight, blind, and reevaluate.
This show was very insightful for me. I have never met a blind person or heard one of there stories so to hear someone tell there story about everyday life. Obviously his perception is very different from ours. For him to just find the phone in the hotel room he had to crawl around the floor and feel all around the room and he still could not find it because the room was way different from what he expected. It was pretty clear in the beginning it was difficult when it came to his daughter. Kids that young do not understand anything outside of themselves. She did not understand because of her age and because at the age she was at she only knew what was going on with her and not her dad. Things seemed to become easier when it finally clicked in her head that he cannot see.
If I were to wake up in the morning and not be able to see I do not know what I would. I have gone my whole life with seeing and having a drastic change like that would effect me in so many ways. I cannot image how it was for him to be eight teen and then start to lose his vision. There are so many beautiful things in this world and he knows that since at one point he could see them. It must be sad not being able to see what your daughter looks like or your wife.
Terms: Perception
Listening to the story of Ryan trying to find the phone and it not being there. Then the next morning the phone rings and he finds it, but once he hangs it up and heads to go back to bed there is a wall behind him. He never realized there was an alcove in the room that he had not found the night before. Just thinking about this makes me uncomfortable. I have lived my whole life being able to see things, whether it be color, shape or lines, you name it I can see it. Thinking about living in a world where the only thing you can see is the image that you have made in your head terrifies me. I have grown so accustomed to it that living in a world of darkness does not even seem like living to me. I personally would lose my mind.
Listening to act 1 was almost heart breaking. To be blind and miss out on some of the things he described, or to commit all of the little heartbreaks would make me feel terrible as a father. I worked at a daycare over last summer, and it was bad enough when you hurt one kids feelings because another was throwing a fit and you couldn’t finish the puzzle you had started with the first child. Now imagining doing this, or something along the lines of what he described, to your own child would be hurtful. It would personally make me feel like a useless parent as he said.
Being blind is a unique problem, because while they can still function in basically every other way, their main sense is out of commission. This is due to the fact that these men do not have properly functioning rods, cones, lens’s or retinas. Due to this fact they have to rely on their other senses to detect stimuli around them so that they can perceive the world around them. One way they can do this is by using their sense of touch. When they feel something the receptors in their skin sends a signal, which then goes through transduction so the brain can understand it, and they can then come up with a picture in their head of what they have found, or a room they may have just mapped out. I always understood the fact that being blind was a disadvantage, but listening to first hand accounts of the frustrations is an eye opener. I now understand blindness with much more depth. It makes me thankful for the fact that I am able to see, I can’t hardly imagine life without it.
Key Terms: rods, cones, lens, retina, stimuli, perceive, receptors, transduction
As we know our senses detect physical stimuli and our brains process perception. Human has 5 main and traditionally recognized senses which are sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Every day we use our senses and do not usually notice how they are important. Every time we open our eyes, half of our brain springs into action. This sensory mechanism enables us to see what is happening in our environment. For us it is ordinary parts of our lives. However could you imagine how is to live without ability to hear or it to be a blind person.
In this American life episode blind man was describing how it to be blind in real world. In the prologue he was saying how he grown person lost in a hotel room. For us it may sound funny, how a person could lose in a room. However for him it was terrifying. He came to the room and just wanted to call his wife to tell that everything is alright, but he couldn't find a phone. Many times he tried to go around room and everything for him was invisible until he touches it. He discovered coffee a table, sofa, even was thinking that phone could be in the bathroom, but there was no phone. He gave up and in the next morning magically the phone was ringing, it was his wife. For us it is simple thing that we do automatically and do not even think about it, but in this case it is became a problem. After talking with his wife, he got a new problem, he couldn't find his bed. At the place where bed was supposed to be, now there was a wall. For us it might sound funny and even impossible but for him it was scary and for real. He said when you are blind you cannot assume anything. Blind people rely on pictures in their mind but if it is wrong you live in a mistake.
However his blindness touches not only him but his family too. It was funny and touching how he was trying to explain to his 2 years old daughter that papa does not see. “You close your eyes but with mind are open”. It was his explanation to daughter, but it did not make any sense for her. He told the situation when he was walking with his daughter in the forest in Canada, and then she said: “bear". How would you react in his place? He as totally disoriented, did not know what to do. People are saying when you do not have one of your senses; your other senses will sharpen. May be because of that he was trying to smell the bear, but didn't have any idea how bears should smell. Eventually he recognized that his daughter is upset because he dropped her teddy bear. Perhaps for him at that moment the whole world turned upside down, and the reason of it was teddy bear.
For us sight seems so effortless and, so automatic that most people take it for granted. This experience makes me think about how it is important for my life and how we were fortunate to see the world in all its colors. This example of blind person describes how people live on the other side, how it is hard to do simple things in daily routine. It is entirely different reality where they have to overcome different types of obstacles every day to understand what is happening around them. I never thought before about unsightly world, what it to be blind is, and now I'm thankful that I do not have this kind of problem. After his description I realized how it hard to be blind and do not see the world around. I understand how it changes way of living and it affects people around also. It was difficult to explain his daughter that he is blind. I can't imagine how it's hard not be able to see your child, her first steps, her smile and other meaningful and touching aspects of her life. It is difficult to communicate with your child when you are blind, I would be scary to harm her and do something wrong that can upset her. Our lives consist of different events which can be happy and sometimes not, such as graduation from college or high school, getting married, having babies, first job and salary, first time when you see the sea or even ocean, you first travel, and so on. All these events are emotional and very meaningful to people and it’s hard to imagine how people live throughout life with disability to see these events. Every day we can complain about our lives, how difficult it is but somewhere people would be happy just to have chance to see our world.
Terms used: Physical stimuli, perception, sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, blindness, sensory mechanism.
While listening to interview, I became extremely grateful for my ability to see. Just listening to his struggle while trying to find the phone is so frustrating. It’s insane how much I take for granted my sight. How embarrassing that must be for him to be lost in a hotel room. Hearing his descriptions of the world without sight makes me see how difficult it can really be. Doing simple tasks like going to the bathroom or using the phone is so difficult for him, he doesn't have the luxury of being able to see. He has to guess and or feel for where everything is.
Listening to the story that involved his daughter was sort of heartbreaking. Hearing his discuss how he couldn't hear the ball was so sad. Here was his daughter crying because she thinks her dad doesn't want to play with her when in reality, he just can’t see it. He has to rely on his other senses to experience life. He said he felt like a terrible parent because he couldn't tend to all of his daughter’s needs, and that’s heartbreaking. When he picked up his daughter from school and wanted to give her a hug, he accidentally hugged a little boy which broke his daughter’s heart because she thought he was trying to replace her. She doesn't understand that her father is blind. She’s too little to understand. And while people were laughing about his stories, they were still depressing. He also couldn't protect her to his fullest potential. When they were walking to her daycare, she kept screaming “bear” and her father thought she meant an actual bear, when in reality she meant that she had dropped her teddy bear. It was sad to hear that he couldn't help with his daughter with simple things. When watching television, he couldn't answer her questions like “who is that” because he couldn't see.
After listening to this program, my insight to the blind has changed so much. I have so much more respect for them. They have such a tough time doing simple, everyday tasks that I take for granted. Being blind and raising a child is even more challenging. I never thought about that aspect and how difficult it would be. Sight is such an important part of my everyday life that I take for granted.
Psychological terms I used were senses, perception, sensation and stimuli.
9/24/14
After listening to This American Life episode #464 called Invisible Made Visible I have gained more empathy toward those who deal with blindness. In this episode a man named Ryan tells his story. He has been blind since the age of 18, so he is used to having to “grope” things in order to find what he is looking for. A story he shares in the recording is a night in a hotel room where he thought he had completely lost his mind. He checked every table in the room more than two times for a phone to call his wife on. The phone was not there. The next morning he woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. The phone was in the room the whole time, he just didn’t follow down and feel the wall enough to realize that there was a whole other part of the room that he was missing. “I was a grown man lost in a hotel room” he stated. He clarifies that the worst part is actually the embarrassment caused from being blind.
The second story Ryan shared was about raising a child as a blind father. One cannot imagine how disappointing it would be to be unable to play certain games and do different activities with their son or daughter. He tried to explain to his little girl, “Papa sees what you see when your eyes are closed, only my eyes are open”. However she never quite understands it until about the age of three. When she tried to play soccer with him she felt that she was being rejected. She cried when he accidentally hugged the wrong kid from daycare. She didn’t understand why her father was freaking out when she was saying “bear” when she only meant her teddy bear that was lying on the ground, not a live bear. When she finally learned that he was blind she said “Papa doesn’t see!” This was a relief to Ryan as now she finally understands and she won’t have to feel rejected.
All of these experiences make me think about the way I grew up. Playing games with my mother and father. If I try to imagine playing these games with them while they are blind it automatically becomes seemingly less entertaining. No playing catch, no hide and seek, no tag. Sure, they could still be played to some extent by using other senses such as smelling and hearing, but it would never be to the same extent of playing them with someone who wasn’t visually impaired. I also think about my life now and how blindness would impact it now. It would be very difficult to walk to my classes. I probably would not be majoring in studio art, and I definitely would not be doing any driving.
Ryan’s descriptions of his blindness change my understanding of both the unsighted world and also the sighted world. With many things on my mind I don’t often remember to remind myself how fortunate I am to be able to use all of my senses. Visuals in my life are incredibly important. Whether or not I am making a painting or examining the world that surrounds me, visuals ultimately take over a large part of my life, both as an artist and a human being.
Psychological Terms: Blindness, senses, hearing, smelling.
This was an interesting segment. I enjoyed hearing from a personal perspective what it is like to be blind because it really got me thinking and not just about the obvious "we shouldn't take the gift of sight for granted" thing, but about personal perceptions of reality. The man from the interview wasn't born blind, but his vision began fading around 18 years old. First of all, how scary would that be? Growing up your whole life with this notion of what life is, seeing faces and beautiful places all around and then all of a sudden it starts to go away, like information being deleted on a computer, it would totally alter your sense of consciousness and reality, or at least it would for me. When I feel anxious and derealization might be setting in, I highly rely on my senses to keep me grounded, sight being close to the top of importance, so to completely have this important tool snatched away from me would leave me like a fish out of water. Whenever it was brought up about his blindness developing when he was 18, I also couldn't help but think about what life must be like for those who are born blind. What is beautiful? Perhaps the sound of their loved ones' voices or the touch of something warm, soft and familiar is what beauty is to them, How do they know or comprehend color or learn what objects are in relation to other things in the world? These is something I've often pondered prior to listening to this segment.
During the part about being lost in the hotel room left me feeling more uneasy than amused, yes the concept of a grown man being lost inside a hotel room is slightly humorous, it is all terrifying to me. When he talked about a wall seeing to have been where the bed should have been, made my heart beat a little faster. The idea of having your reality abruptly change without my understanding or knowledge would no doubt cause you to feel insane and utterly alone. I feel he described the moment when his daughter finally realized his condition incredibly beautiful in the simplicity of it, "Papa doesn't see." - like it was saying something like "Papa doesn't like cookies." after those years of heart wrenching misunderstanding what a relief it must have been, not only for the father, but for the little girl herself - all of the things that must have come together in her mind after that moment, remembering instances where she had felt her that her father must have been ignoring her and having those memories completely change - an 'aha' type of moment.
As an art major and someone who has grown up with artists for parents, I am extremely visual person. My whole life has revolved around it, not just for the practical/everyday/survival uses, but as a life style, an outlet for my passions and a way of communication, I'm not sure I can even begin to wrap my head around the concept of my sensory reality that I love so much being utterly warped. I already often feel alone in crowds of people, but I can only imagine that not being able to experience the shared experience that is life with sight would at times be a dark and isolating feeling.
psychology terms: sight, blindness, consciousness, concept of reality, senses, perception
I am currently listening to this podcast as I am writing this write up and it first starts out with a mellow introduction that sounds like an ordinary day for a blind guy. Standard procedure of a blind man, and he as one simple task: to call his wife when he had arrived. As he attempted to scan the room without any vision, he bumps, gropes and even sprawls along the wall, desks and coffee tables to understand the room better. He is using the sensations that are felt from his hands to make a mental map of the room. He eventually finds his way around the room, yet no phone to be found. How weird for a hotel to not have a phone. He picks that he cannot find the phone today, and does not call his now worried wife. I feel at first that the man is being played as some joke, yet he had not mapped out the entire room yet. Without the sensation of sight, I would feel that it would be a difficult time getting though a day. Yet, I would know that one would eventually understand how to make things work better, but just walking without perception of the world around us, would become a difficult task.
I too know how this feels. I am considered almost blind within the scientific community. My eyes were ‘special’ as in that my retina was formed in an egg like shape so that the light that passes through my cornea would be abnormal. I My eyesight was so poor that I could not read books without the paper being and inch away from my face. I have gone to many eye doctors between then and now and my vision has cleared up greatly! Now being able to wear glasses/ contacts is an amazing experience to have, I am blessed to be able to see.
The second story told is quite cute I would have to think! I would be quite difficult for a young child to understand that others do not see the same that they see things. I would feel that it would be a hard for a parent that cannot see to have a child that does not understand yet why he is how he is. Yet he does a great job with her.
Psychology terms: Perception, sensation: cornea, retina
Ryan's experience in the hotel room made me definitely think of trying to fumble my way around a pitch black room. It's hard to know what's there when you can't see what's there. It's especially difficult when you're looking for something in the dark, and don't know where it's at. I could never imagine being blind. The bear situation sounded like a terrible blind version of "hot or cold" (like when you're close to an object and you're hot, far away and you're cold). Any sort of high stress or critical situation would be a million times more scary if you were blind.
Being blind would just be so difficult. I actually had a conversation about a week ago with some classmates about being blind and being deaf. Most of us agreed that we would rather be deaf than blind. It would be awful to never listen to music again, but at least the vibrations could be felt. It would just be terrifying to have no or extremely limited vision. I feel so grateful to have all of my senses in relatively good condition. I don't know if Ryan lost his vision because of a genetic condition or if something physical went wrong, like his cataracts became too thick or something went wrong with his optic nerve, but at least he had some time to know what the world looks like.
I feel as if I have taken the way I've been able to perceive the for granted a bit. I'll try to not make that mistake again. I might not have perfect vision, but I am sure not blind. Ryan has to rely a lot on his other senses, especially touch. I'm sure his sensory receptors in his hands are more sensitive than most people's, and also his hearing is probably more sensitive.
But--just because you are blind doesn't mean there's no more purpose in life. Ryan has a wife and what sounds like a very adorable child. He also sounds very humorous. While I would never choose to be blind, with lots of work, it could be managed.
Terms used:
vision, blind, optic nerve, cataracts, senses, perceive, sensory receptors
When I first started listening to the story, I did not realize that he, Ryan Knighton, was blind while he was trying to find the phone at night. Sometimes, I get up in the middle of the night and can not see, so I just feel around for what I am looking for instead of turning the lights on. I just take for granted that I have the ability to walk five feet and turn the light on at night or even during the day, I do not even have to try to see. People that can see, can process the light waves within an amazingly short amount of time, so we do not even think twice about it. Anyways, once I realized that he was blind, and did not have the ability to even begin the four steps of sensation and perception of vision, I put myself in his shoes and I felt helpless. I felt like no matter what Ryan did, he could not see. It is amazing to me that a simple task, such as looking for a telephone, is nearly impossible to people that are blind because if they are not able to become a pressure receptor, to them it is next to inexistent. To Ryan, there was absolutely no stimuli to show him that there was a phone in the room, therefore, there was no phone, or so he thought. It was sad to me that Ryan could not even complete a simple task as to call his wife while he was out of town.
The second story, when Ryan’s daughter was saying “bear” over and over, he thought that she was trying to tell him that there was a bear by them, so being a protective dad, he put her on his back and started walking away. He could not tell if he was going in the correct direction but he just felt where she was pointing so he walked that way. He went in circles until he realized that she dropped her teddy bear. I thought it was probably really upsetting to him that he could not, at first, get his daughter to out of harm’s way safely, and secondly, when he heard her crying that he could not sooth her because he had no idea what was going on. When things are loud enough, he uses his auditory receptors to feel out the stimuli, but in this case, he could not hear a bear so he did not know in what direction she was speaking about.
I think it would be so difficult not to be able to see especially because we use our sight for everything whether it be for our own use or even eye contact when holding a conversation with someone. I can not imagine having to rely on other senses to perceive information. I think it was really informative to hear about how one lives that can not see just so we get a perspective on someone else’s struggles and we can try to put ourselves in their shoes.
Terms used: light waves, sensation, perception, pressure receptor, stimuli, auditory receptors
After listening to this radio show, I realized that to see everything around me is extremely valuable. In the first story, Ryan stated “I was a grown man lost in a hotel room, that is, he had a sight disability at the age of eighteen. So he figures out his surroundings by touching everything and creating his own image in his mind. When he went to hotel room, he made enormous effort to find telephone by scanning the room by his hands, but he couldn’t do that because he missed judged one wall. Therefore, he had to create image again about the hotel room structure and I think it is how frustrating that would be. In the second story, Ryan had a talk about his daughter, Tess. She couldn’t understand that her father is blind at such an early age. When she tried to play soccer with her father, she felt that she was being rejected. And when he hugged the other kid from daycare, she cried and couldn’t understand him. Before listening this radio, I could never imagine being blind. This Ryan’s story made me to think how grateful to see everything. If I were blind like Ryan, I will frustrate my life. A very simple task such as going to bed, brushing my teeth and eating food will be difficult and challenging if I am blind. From now, I should not take my eyesight for granted.
The Psychology terms I used were imagine: sight, blind
I think having no sight would have to have a tremendous effect on you psychologically. I also think that other factors would play into how it would affect the mind. One fact would be, was the person blind from birth? Did they have sight and then lost it later in life? I think the latter would be the worst of the two. If you were born blind, then you would not miss what you do not know. So a person that had sight at one time and went blind would always have that recollection in their minds and I could see that tearing at the mentality of that person. Although I can’t tell you what being totally blind is like, I can tell you about being blind in one eye. As a kid it was hard catching a ball, being blind in one eye you do not have depth perception. As I got older my hand-eye coordination got better, I guess my brain made the adjustments and I adapted. Still though, watching 3-D movies and my dream about playing in the major leagues are a far gone conclusion. If I was totally blind, I just couldn’t imagine the stress of doing the normal everyday things. Constantly having to rely on other people and just not having the sort of independence most of us take for granted. I put myself in that place by closing my eyes, shutting all the lights off and trying to walk around the house. It was an uneasy feeling to get from one side to the other. I’ve read that once you lose a sense, that the other senses become stronger. I think that that is our brain helping to overcome the handicap. Now in the radio show, He used a lot of humor to help explain this handicap. When I imagined myself in the situations he talked about, I did feel my stress level increase. To overcome the difficulties of blindness is unimaginable. Terms: Psychologically, Mentality, Perception, Stress, Adapted, Senses, Brain.
This (radio story?) made me think about how lucky I am to be able to see properly and not have any major eyesight complications. I imagine that it would be very terrifying to have absolutely no perception of your surroundings but at the same time it would be very amazing to be able to gather more amounts of stimuli out of other senses. To be able to smell something and know exactly what it is. To be able to feel something with such great detail that you can set certain textures with items. The way he described this whole thing, not being able to see, to his daughter I thought was quite adorable. Of course when a two year old is involved, anything can turn out to be adorable. Her reactions were quite normal, especially the one where she found out or came to the realization that her daddy “couldn’t see.”
His description of what it is like to be blind was quite like the ones I have read in books. They often feel their way around or sometimes even smell their way through things. It’s really quite amazing. When he described feeling the hotel room, I found myself to be rather confused. I replayed that part again, closing my eyes and trying to imagine the room that he was staying in. It was very, very difficult. It was hard to place the shape of the room and where the furniture was placed. I could tell that my brain wasn't making any mental maps like it usually does when I see things or places. I’ve always respected people who had little to no vision, but this small radio show clip makes me respect them even more.
Key terms: perception, smell, feel, stimuli, vision
I always wondered what it would be like to be blind. After listening to this man’s story, I never realized how truly confusing and possibly frustration it would be to live with such a disability. However, if I had lived with the blindness for a while, I feel like I would grow used to it, and it would be considered “normal” to me, just like it is “normal” for me to see. When he was in his hotel room, I was just imagining what it would be like to be lost in a hotel room. After all, it is a square room, so how hard can it be to feel my way around? His description of his adventure for the search of the hotel telephone made me feel frustrated. I know I would be fed up if I could not find something as simple as a telephone, and I would be especially angry at myself because I could not function normally. However, he simply states that assumption is never a good thing when it comes to blindness. This makes sense to me. Assumption can result in failure and low self-esteem, at least for me. His descriptions of how he attempts to find his way around the room make me realize that there is a huge difference between the sighted world and the unsighted world. It is just complete darkness, and it is very hard for me to comprehend completely. I’m sure it would be even more difficult for his young child to understand his disability. I never thought about the loved ones’ feelings and emotions when it came to a blind person. For example, his daughter would get so upset that he accidentally hugged another child, and she would take it offensively when he would not play with her. In reality, he simply did not know. In the world of blindness, I feel like it would take more understanding, patience, and less assumption than it would in the sighted world. I personally feel like I take my senses (sight, smell, touch, etc.) for granted after listening to this man’s daily life with blindness. This man’s stories helped me realize that the human brain has such a complex nervous system, and it has such a complex sensory reception that is significant in everyday life.
Psychological terms: senses, nervous system, sensory reception
Before listening to This American Life’s episode Invisible Made Visible I feel I was naïve to the complications that come with blindness or any physical disability. I obviously knew there are many things that those with disabilities cannot do, but I definitely feel I didn’t fully grasp the depth of the emotional pain and the amount of hardship that comes with disabilities. Though I’m sure the man has come to terms with being blind, when listening to him talk about his experience in the hotel room, I couldn’t help but think about what a disadvantage he is at. I cannot imagine not being able to do something as simple as finding a telephone. It was very interesting to me to hear him talk about how he mentally visualizes what something looks like, and if he is wrong he will be confused until he finds out the hard way. He is able to do this because he had experienced life without being blind. Those who had not had the opportunity to experience life without blindness have to go off of what they’ve been told. I compare this feeling to reading a book and constructing a person in my mind with features that are described. For the blind, every person they encounter has a profile that they made up for them. I cannot imagine not knowing what the world looks like. Though sometimes it sounds glorious to not have to see some of the gruesome things life can bring, this audio made me realize how privileged I am to be able to see my mom’s face, my clothes that I wear every day, and what this beautiful world looks like. Also, when he was describing his experience in the hotel room, he never mentioned the thought of going to ask for help to find the phone. I infer that as a grown man he felt embarrassed that he couldn’t find this. There was a much more emotional vibe in act one when the man was talking about raising his daughter being blind. My heart aches for every person who will never be able to see what their child looks like. Though he had such an amazing attitude toward his blindness, he described the situations of trying to tell his daughter that he was blind. The most heart-wrenching thing to me was when he talked about accidentally grabbing the boy at his daughter’s daycare instead of his daughter. I’m sure as a father he feels in some ways he failed her when she was young and she could not understand why he could not meet her needs. When she finally could somewhat understand I’m sure that was a rewarding feeling for their family. I truly believe people with disabilities tend to have a better outlook on life because of the challenges they face. Living down the street from Iowa School for the Deaf for nearly my whole life has helped me draw this conclusion. With ISD being directly across the street from my high school, many of the deaf students would come take classes at my high school. This gave me many opportunities to discuss the difficulties they have being deaf. Every single person I met has had such a positive attitude toward their disability and believe they are lucky to even have the opportunity to be at Iowa School for the Deaf to learn in an environment that they can better develop in. I think part of the reason I was so naïve to simple challenges people with disabilities face, such as finding the phone or picking up your daughter’s dropped teddy bear, is because of this positive and enthusiastic attitude. The man in the audio made several jokes about his challenges and was able to show that he is okay with being blind. This leads me to the conclusion that the title, Invisible Made Visible, could be deciphered as the blind making an invisible world to them visible in the best way possible. It also could just mean that the audio would be “making visible” or talking about what it is like to be blind. This man definitely allowed me to see blindness in a new light. I enjoyed it very much.
Terms: blindness, disabilities, emotional pain, needs
While I certainly don't wish to mock anyone who is stricken with the inability to see, I found the second half of the story with the bear to be particularly humorous. I always enjoy it when folks can talk about their afflictions in a lighthearted fashion. The major concept I got from the first story (about the fellow in the hotel room) is the scope of the limitations that our perceptions suffer without vision, our primary sense. It's hard to empathize with someone who literally gets lost in their own hotel room due to the presence of an alcove that they hadn't managed to discover. That being said, I always found it astounding how people bereft of one sense are able to train their brains to rely more heavily on another sense, such as auditory or tactile, to piece together information about their immediate surroundings. They become more attuned to sounds, and more sensitive to touch. I imagine this would likely be more manageable if one were either born blind, or were stricken blind at a fairly young age, likely before the concrete operational stage, or perhaps even preoperational stage. This way they'd have a chance to acclimate better, as opposed to someone who's afflicted with it later on. I think something similar to this is addressed in the second story (about the man and his daughter) when the man talks about his two year old not being able to understand the fact that her Dad couldn't see due to her natural egocentrism indicative of those in her stage of cognitive development. As a whole it makes me think of the great divide in perspective between those with sight and those without. Unless you yourself are blind, whether it's from an early age or not, there's almost no conceivable way you could hope to experience what it's like to not have the luxury of leaning on our most prized method of perceiving the world around us. As far as changes in my understanding in sighted versus non-sighted go, I hadn't ever really thought of things such as the emotional impact being blind can leave on others around you, most notably children who aren't able to comprehend such things yet. I imagine there might be a lot of frustration and maybe even a little resentment from either party in some cases. One point I would like to mention though, and I know it might be irrelevant, but if I were blind, I would not live anywhere close to large predators, specifically bears.
The keywords are: perception, vision, senses, auditory, tactile, concrete operational stage, preoperational stage, egocentrism, cognitive development,
Ricardo Garza
Being able to see is often taken for granted. We complain about things being too bright, or a color you don’t like. But we often do not have the ability to know what life is like for a blind person. Sure we can blindfold ourselves and pretend, but we still see the images in our brains and have an idea of what we are touching and looking for. For a blind individual it is difficult to navigate, and to live life like someone who has the capability of vision.
Ryan Knighton is a blind man. In the prologue to this broadcast we learn of one of the struggles of being blind. He explains how he was in his hotel room and could not find the telephone, so he felt around the room, feeling along the bed and night stand. He then goes on to feel around for a where he thinks a coffee table should be, eventually finding the coffee table. He then gropes the table because he had difficulty knowing what was where on the table and how it was shaped and how it felt. Eventually he begins Marcel Marceauing the walls. What this basically means is that he begins from one point of the room and feels up and down and moves throughout the room. After not finding anything he decides to go to bed and not call his wife. But in the morning he hears the phone and finds it on the coffee table and his wife asks why he didn’t answer the phone. He explains and hangs up and decides to go back to bed. But as he walks to where he thought the bed was he finds just another wall. The reason behind this was because he did not know that in the room there was double furniture, aside from the bed. So he initially thought that the coffee table and sofa were only on one part of the room, so he had no idea about the other and confused himself into a shock and worry.
I found this interesting because I did not really know how much trouble and difficulty being blind could actually be. I understand that a blind individual cannot see and has a struggle to do everyday activities, but I didn’t take into awareness the fact that a simple change of furniture or movement of a phone could psychologically effect a blind person.
From Act I he showed how his daughter did not realize that his father actually blind and could not see until she was three years old. He further explained how his blindness effected his daughter by how he couldn’t roll a ball back to her or couldn’t reach for a cookie without pinching the air. I find this intriguing because not only was he effected by his blindness, but his child was also effected, but on a different level. His daughter had to realize that her father was not going to have the chance to see or to know that she dropped her teddy bear without feeling her arms or asking. I also found the fact that Ryan’s senses were also boosted, such as smell, when he tried to smell for an actual bear.
These experiences make me think about how we take our vision for granted and how much we complain about how we hate seeing or looking at particular things. But we are actually lucky to have had the opportunity to have vision. As he described what it was like to be blind, for him, my understanding of the sight and unsighted world. It changed by how I now understand how psychologically important our vision. My view also changed in the way that I now know that being blind has much more of an emotional effect, than I had anticipated.
Terms: Vision, Emotion, view, sight, blindness, blind, Marcel Marceauing, groping, senses
For the guy interviewed in this show, he goes through things most people do not even think about dealing with. When he was in the hotel room it was actually sad that he could not find the phone. It was like someone was playing a joke on him. When he was with his daughter, she was too young to understand that her dad cannot see. That would be hard when your daughter thinks that you are able to see her and the things that she is doing but he couldn’t.
These things that he has to go through makes me think about what is like to be blind. I have really bad eye sight anyways, I have a stigmatism, I had bifocals in kindergarten, I can barley see a hand that is in front of my face without my contacts or glasses and I am a little colored blind. I have bad eyes, as it is, but not as bad being blind. Cones are what make you see color. My cones are not very strong which leads to a little bit of color blindness, and I thought that stunk. His retinas, cones, rods, and fovea’s are not functional and I thought my eyes were bad. It makes me think of how lucky I am to be able to wear glasses and contacts and still be able too see unlike him.
The descriptions made me think about how much we rely on our eyes for things. We have the senses of smell, taste, touch and hear but I feel like I rely on my eyes the most to see things. For him, his others senses have to be very strong because eyesight is a major thing. Like when his daughter and him were walking to the daycare and she kept saying bear, that would be very scary and frightening not knowing where this bear is and knowing you cannot protect your child to the fullest of your abilities if there was an actually bear. The bear ended up being his daughters bear that she had dropped, but if it was a real bear he would have no way of knowing where the bear is and how to get away from the bear. It was be scary living in an unsighted world, you would have to rely on your other sense and trust that other people will guide you too the right place. When he was traveling and was in the hotel he had to trust that people would guide him to the right places to get there. Living in an unsighted world would be scary everything would be black; it would be like not knowing where anything is ever.
While I was watching this I felt bad for the guy. In the hotel all he wanted to do is call his wife, but he did not know there was more to the room. I also felt bad because up till age three his daughter did not understand that her dad was blind, she did not understand that he could not see. When she finally did I felt like she did not quite understand it because she still put his hand on the television. It made me think that it would be weird not seeing your wife, parents or kids everyday it would be a very hard thing to deal with.
Rods, cones, Retina, fovea, sight, taste, touch, smell, hearing
I cant imagine how he flew on a plane and got all the way to the hotel room. Once in the room he tried to find a phone to call his wife. He felt around what he thought was the entire room and could not find the phone. He took a break then he tried again and still no phone. He decided to go to bed and that he would try again in the morning. He woke up to a phone ringing and it was his wife. He told her he did not call her because there wasn't a phone in the room last night but now there was. When he hung up and tried to go back to the bed there was a wall behind him. The night before when he was going around the room he didnt follow one of the walls all the way and there was actually another part of the room. He talked about a time when he tried to explain to his two year old why he cant see like her. But she cant understand because she is too young. He also talks about how there is miscommunications with his daughter. There was a time when his daughter kicked the ball to him but it was a foam ball. because it was a foam ball he couldn't hear it. She started crying because he didnt kick it back. He asked her “whats wrong pumpkin?” but she kept crying. He told her everything was ok and go get her ball when really it was by him. He didnt know what was going on because he couldn't hear but he had to rely on his hearing and it didnt help him. His wife later told him what happened and he felt awful for “neglecting” his daughter. Another time he was picking her up from pre school and heard her yell “Papa” so he crunched down and held his arms open wide for her. A body slammed against him and then he heard his daughter crying. He realized it wasn't her, it was a little boy.
Hearing about his experiences makes me sad. I couldn't imagine growing up with my dad not being able to see because countless times I would say “Look at this!” To me he seems like he handles all of this very well and makes the best of it. If it were me i dont know if i would be able to do that. I think i would always be frustrated. I never really thought about what it would be like to be blind. They was he describes things is different than i would. He uses very descriptive words, like groping, that way people know what hes talking about where people can see for the most part use very vague words because we can see. I really liked listening to what he had to say and his stories because they are different and not something you hear everyday.
Terms: blind, gropin
In the first episode about Ryan in his hotel really made me realize how difficult it is to be blind.
Not only is it hard to know where things are but also the embarrassments because you're
blind. I really liked that this was told on a radio podcast instead of shown in a video because
when Ryan was describing what he was doing and where he was going, we were right there
along with him. It made us see his point of view from being a blind person. For example when
he was going around telling us what he felt, we created and image in our brain just like what
he has to do. I also understand now that blindness uses the sense of touch more often than I thought because he doesnt have sight. I just never really thought about it. It helps us
understand that sight should really not be taken for granted. Before I listened to this podcast
never even thought about how raise a child while being blind. I didn't think about how when
the child is young that they wouldn't be able to understand until they're older. Raising a hold
and being blind in my opinion would be one of the hardest things to do in life. I don't know if I
could do it. They way he described how blindness is made me think of how grateful we all
should be to able to have sight in the world unlike Ryan with a unsighted world. To me if you
turnecd blind at 18 its really hard to transition. even though hes olde r now he is doing very
well social. I think a big part of this could be his family, he foucous on the good things in his
life rather than the bad When he decried how it was to finally know his daughter know he was blind melted my heart. I also really like how he made his stories funny to break the tension of how hard It is to raise a kid while being blind.
Terms: blindness,sight, sense, touch
Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very interesting experience in a hotel room and tries to make his daughter understand that he is blind. This was exciting and funny because of the words, expressions, and the way that things were explained throughout the interview. Ryan started becoming blind when he was 18 years old and grew to understand what he has and not make it into a disability. On just a regular day, he stayed at a hotel and decided to call his wife when he made it to his room. His way of doing things were to feel around and to get familiar with the area and to find the phone. He couldn’t find the phone after searching for 30 minutes and was going in circles to find it. He gave up on his search for the phone and decided to try and find the phone tomorrow. A phone ringing woke him up from his sleep the next day and became confused because of not understanding why he didn’t find the phone yesterday. He searched high and low and answered the phone and it was his wife. She asked why he did not call her yesterday and explained that he did not find the phone and was deeply confused. She didn’t believe him. Throughout the years, Ryan’s daughter Tess had a hard time believing he was blind because of the fact she was a baby. Ryan talked about how his daughter wanted to play ball and tossed it to him, but he couldn’t catch it. He didn’t understand why she was upset until his wife told him. Tess felt somewhat neglected but that was not the case. He was just blind and wanted his daughter to understand. “You can’t assume anything or you live inside the mistake” said Ryan. He meant that he thought living like this,that his daughter was just going to understand that he is blind, but it was much more difficult than that.
As Tess grew older she became more observant, and saw that when her father asked for a piece of bread and she passed it, but he didn’t grab it fast enough. “Dad, can’t see” she stated. After that conversation at the dinner table things got a little easier and learned that some things are better to just let happen. He felt like a useless father for not being able to see and became humble that he got to have a better relationship with his daughter. I learned a lot from this assignment and got a few laughs out of it. Ryan has been through dozens of conflicts through his life but he overcame his self-doubt. Thinking that blindness is a problem was a mistake and that embarrassment was the cause. My sight has made me become unaware of some of the issues people battle on a daily basis and taught me humans are beautiful creatures inside and out. Ryan made his life “normal” in a way so his daughter didn't have live with his burden.
Terms: sight
While listening to the beginning of the show my heart sort of broke because of this man’s daughter couldn’t understand that he was blind. While she was on his shoulders there was this miscommunication going on about what type of bear. This leads me to believe that our vision and other senses are so important in the way we communicate because we rely on them on a daily basis. There is this cognitive gap between the man and his daughter, and it hinders his ability to do daily tasks, but also in his mind he feels like a useless father because of it. In the beginning of the episode he says that he cannot wait to be able to tell his daughter that he is blind. I couldn’t quite grasp that concept until the episode was over. I understood what he was saying and the meaning behind it, but I never “got it” until I realized how much his disability had hindered his parenting style. This man really changed my perspective about being blind. He made it seem that the hardest part about being blind was the inability for people to conceptualize his disability in the way that it affects him. I had personally never thought about what being blind would be like. I mean we all have been taught what being blind is, but I can’t put myself in that boat. I think that is because it comes with a lot of other issues or realities that I can’t fathom because I haven't experienced myself. I can empathize and I am sure it is a very hard thing to deal with, but I couldn’t imagine making the people around me upset because of something that I cannot actually control. I thought it was very interesting when the young girl began to actually began to understand the idea of not being able to see. Knighton had to explain that she had to test it out though. This little girl just began to realize that her dad cannot see, but still has a lot to understand about it. In a way I think this little girl is just like any of us. I am sure that there are many things that we don’t understand about being blind until you actually experience them or live with someone that is blind. The world around affects them differently because their senses are being used in a different way as well. I still cannot really understand what it may feel to be blind, but I definitely have something to think about. This story is very relatable but in other ways I think it is hard to relate to in ways. I am not blind, and I am not a father, or a husband, so I only feel like initial sadness for this man, but I cannot feel his struggles unfortunately. I have been given a better insight into what it means when you’re blind, and now I have a new perspective which will help me better understand other things as well. I personally wonder how being blind would affect your development as a child. Is the cognitive development different, or is it the same?
For this assignment we were supposed to listen to a radio post that talked about people who deal with blindness in their every day life. There were two specific scenarios one dealt with a man who was in a hotel room and his lack of vision caused him to think that someone was playing a cruel joke on him, but in reality he was just unaware of where the rest of the room was because he was unable to see he had to rely on bumping into things and feeling his way around the hotel room. The other example dealt with a blind father and his daughter. In the story that he told he and his daughter were on their way to the father's job which was in a dense wooded area where bears were sometimes spotted. While walking he hears his daughter say "bear" and he is panicked, if coarse he is unable to turn around and see whether or not there is a bear behind him so he had to rely solely on his daughters comfort level and noises she made to indicate I she was uncomfortable when he moved one way or the other. It turns out that there was never a real bear and actually the little girl had just dropped her stuffed bear which had made her upset.
Listening to these stories really has changed my perception on the sighted v. unsighted world. When listening to these stories I couldn't help but feel the frustration that they were feeling. Small tasks that seem like everyday ordinary things can become huge obstacles and issues for someone who is not blessed with the ability of sight. I definitely feel as though I take my ability to see for granted. The father even described that although there were obvious struggles with not being able to see things that his daughter sees it also had a impact on their relationship. The daughter would get upset or become offended when the father would not for instance kick her ball back to her when he could not see it. He also explained that he had a hard time explaining to his young daughter that she can see and he could not.
I feel very fortunate to have working rods, retinas, and corneas so that I am not faced with the same frustrating challenges. Throughout the radio post however I couldn't help but notice that the men seemed to have an excellent perspective of the position they were in and even explained how they use their heightened remaining senses in order to fill the void.
Psychological terms: Rods, Corneas, retinas
I found the radio broadcast to be very interesting. I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to walk into a hotel room and not see anything at all. To have to feel every inch of the room just to be aware of all of my surroundings just seems extremely difficult to me. He actually missed an entire room of the hotel room because he couldn’t see and that just seems unheard of for me. When I walk into a room I immediately am completely aware of my surroundings but he has no idea. His perception suddenly becomes completely different than mine. The way I see a room is different than he does. He feels everything and relies on other senses, while I just have to look at it. I also find it amazing how calm he was able to stay while he thought there was a bear behind him. I think he handled the whole situation much better than I ever could have. I would have panicked and ran as fast as I could trying to find somewhere to hide. I think it was sad though that he could not understand that his daughter only dropped her stuff teddy bear. It’s amazing to me what he goes through on a daily basis and how he still manages to have a mostly normal life.
When he is describing what it’s like to be blind it made me realize how difficult it really is to be blind. I actually closed my eyes and walked around my room trying to get the same kind of sensation of what it was like for him to have to do that on a daily basis. He is very good at describing what it is like to be blind but staying calm while he discusses it. I used to think being blind is one of the most challenging things in the world, which it still is, but he manages it with such calmness and not facing it with fear makes me think that if he can live like that I can do anything if I treat problems the same way.
I have a much higher respect now for people who are blind. What they go through on a daily basis is something that I could never imagine going through. I’m actually glad I listened to this because it has changed the way I view blind people and the way they handle their disability.
Terms: perception, sensation, senses
As I was listening to the broadcast, I felt bad for Ryan. I never really thought about blindness and what people on a daily basis go through. I was surprised that he was on his own in the hotel room, which to me shows a bit of strength and independence. He was able to feel around the room to find certain things. I did feel bad that he wasn’t able to find the phone though. Knowing that there is a phone in the room but not being able to find it would be frustrating. His perception of what he thought the room was like was completely different than how the room was actually set up. The time with his daughter would be frightening too. Since Ryan could not explain to his daughter that he was blind in a way that she could understand, his experience was scary. When his daughter said bear, he immediately thought of the animal because of the location they were in. He could not ask his daughter which way to run so he started turning in circles. He had to try new things until he remembered she had a teddy bear with her when they started walking. I think that because his daughter didn’t understand his blindness, he had to try different things until he came up with a solution.
I remember an activity I did at a camp a few years ago. We had to find a partner and one of us had to put on a blindfold. The other partner had to walk us through the forest and tell us what was coming up on the path like a log, or a few steps to climb, or rocks. They also told us if we were turning left or right. I remember feeling scared because I thought i was going to run into something. I knew I had to trust my partner to make sure I didn’t get hurt. It was very hard to do because I kept wishing i could just take the blindfold off and finish the path. I never thought about how people who are blind feel. As I look back on this, I know that I take being able to see for granted. People who are blind probably wish they could see everyday and experience what the world is like. They have to rely on their other senses to get by daily. With being blind I feel that their hearing is better than anybody else. They have to rely on their ears and listen for things that could be dangerous or helpful.
Ryan’s experience changed how I look at the sighted and unsighted world. I feel terrible because I take being able to see for granted. I feel bad for people who can’t see because there are things they will never be able to do. I also believe that there are some things they can do that people like me can’t do. They adapted to the world and their surroundings in a way that we can’t. I know that how I perceive the world is different from someone who can’t see. This broadcast changed the way I look at the world.
Terms: perception
For this assignment we listened to Ryan Knighton tell us about an experience he had in a hotel room where he was unable to find a telephone to call his wife. Ryan lost his eye sight at 18 meaning he had experienced vision before going blind. To me it would be much harder to have been able to see at one point in my life to not seeing because you would be usedto seeing things all the time and then you would have to learn how to do things in an entirely different way. Like walking around a hotel room and feeling up objects in hopes that a phone would be there. Ryan had no visual perception of the room so when he went around feeling the walls and thought he had gone all the way around the room, but had missed an additional portion of the room that the phone was in. It would be very scary in my mind to be blind. You never know what might be around you like things you could trip and fall over. It would also be difficult and worrying for Ryans wife especially when he is supposed to call to let her know he got there safe but didn't because he couldn't find the phone.
When Ryan began talking about his daughter and how at first she couldn't grasp the fact that her dad couldn't see it would be depressing knowing that your daughter would be mad at you because she rolled a ball to you and got angry but you didn't know why because you couldn't see the ball. It also would've been terrifying for Ryan when his daughter just kept saying bear and thinking that a real bear was somewhere nearby and you had no idea where, and then after running in circles it would be embarrassing to realize she meant her stuffed animal.
This changed my understanding of the sighted vs. unsighted world by realizing that losing one sensation causes you to have to rely more heavily on the other sensations that we have. Like having to rely on sense of touch in order to find things instead of being able to just look round and find what you're looking for.
I actually enjoyed listening to the show, and found myself listening to the rest of it because it was interesting to listen to peoples experiences with their lose of one of their sensations. Like the guy who lost all feeling in his arm and could no longer move it at all and how he had to change the way he did everything to compensate for only having one working arm. I can also connect to this because my brother was born without arms and legs so he has had to deal without being able to do things as easily as others and it has really made me appreciate being healthy and able to use all of my senses and not have difficulty with my day to day life.
Psychology terms: Sensation, Perception
The things I saw in this changed my whole entire way of thinking. Vision is one other most important part of one’s life and we tend to take it for granted. The man in the beginning was sad because of his struggle of finding his phone. A person that can see would just pick up their phone and think nothing about it but he had to use a lot to try to find his phone. Personally I am so fortunate to have my sight because there are so many things that try to do without sight that I wouldn’t have patience for. Being in Ryan’s shoes I wouldn’t know what to do. Even though I would kind of know where I’m going there would also be a lot of things I couldn’t do because I was without sight like driving and being alone and independent. We as people also take the 5 senses for granted but being visually impaired you are forced to recognize these senses. All of this takes me back to when we talked about consciousness. People without sight have to be more conscious and this can cause stress on one. For the daughter, her father didn’t want to tell her early so he would work even harder to act “normal” by using his senses. Because Tess was at the preoperational stage when she found out her dad was blind this could affect her development in the future by possibly making her more independent and responsible earlier than most. This was very educational and it makes me second guess how fortunate I am.
Key Terms: Senses, Preoperational Stage, Visual Impairment, Blind, Development
Humans rely heavily on their senses that is a fact. I've sometimes wondered what it would be like to lose on of those senses and especially what I and most would consider our most important one, our vision. When listening to the radio we are introduced to the father whose eyes are completely blind, His eyes do not function at all the Rods, Corneas and Retinas mostly everything that makes up his eyes are non-functioning.
I can imagine How hard it must to be a Father raising a child it would certainly affect how to raise her, for the first couple of years she would not understand how her father could not see like she could.
When you are blind you must rely on all your senses but vision and I think it would be hard to just grope your way around the room trying to gain perception of it
Terms: Vision, Rods, Corneas, Retinas
I have relatives who are blind. I do not think that they are fully blind, but they definitely cannot see most things. I know blind people cannot see things the way we can, but they can see things with their other senses. They can touch, smell, hear and that is how they can visualize something. They have their own image about what something might look like. Since most of us will not go blind, we do not really have a sense of what it is like to be blind. Yes, we can close our eyes, but it is still not the same. We can adapt without hearing or seeing. The amazing thing is that your other senses will become more sensitive than most people’s senses. The absolute threshold is more powerful in detecting stimuli. Your other senses take over your signal detection theory for the sense you do not have. Some people are just color blind and that they cannot see certain colors. Even though they can see, they still know that they are not able to see certain colors. It is what you know and have adapted to. If everyone in the world was blind from the start, would we think about what we are missing out? Some people are born blind, others get blindness from being sick, or being in an accident. For the people who have always been blind, I do not think that they really know what they are missing. It is normal to them. I think I would rather be born blind than to have my vision taken away from me. I think I would miss my vision so much! I would much rather make up pictures or images of something with my own imagination.
The terms I use in this comment are blindness, senses, absolute threshold, stimuli, signal detection theory.
After watching episode #464 of The American Life I feel like I value my ability to see a lot more then I even did a day ago. The first story told about how he was in a hotel room and could not fine the phone to call his wife to let her know that he is okay. This really puts things into perspective for me because to me that would be an extremely simple easy task, but for him it was very difficult and that night he never found the phone to call his wife. He went to bed woke up the next morning to the sound of the phone ringing so he fallowed the noise and finally found it. The phone ended up being on the other side of the room that he had no clue it was there. The night before he had thought he painted a pretty accurate picture in his mind of what the room looked like, but he was wrong which made everything very confusing to him, I think we all take for granted the simplest of things like being able to scan over a room to see what it looks like. I think this story really makes you more aware, or think more about things that we take for granted in general. The second story is about the same man walking his daughter to daycare, and how a word without sight can mean something completely different. So the man was walking his daughter to daycare when his daughter cries out bear. He cannot see so frightened with his daughter on his back he takes of one way she starts crying so he takes off the other way and she starts crying even more. In the end he realize that his daughter had just dropped her stuffed teddy bear on the ground. This story really shows how vision/sight effects words and thing told to us. This simple thing of a girl dropping her teddy bear caused a panic and also a young girl upset with her father over something so simple. Overall after listening to this radio show I greatly value not only my vision more but also all of my other senses. I take all of these things for granted every day without even realizing it, so listening to this radio show really makes me grateful for the little thing I am able to do on a daily basis.
Ironically, this episode of “This American Life” was quite an eye opener. As I discussed in my last blog post on development, my perception of the world around me is largely based on vision. I don’t know if some people value other senses over vision, but If I had to pick one sense to keep it would be vision. It’s crazy to think about how much harder life would be without being able to see. I was frustrated listening to the description of the guy in the hotel room. How does he have the patience to walk around the room MULTIPLE times and feel everything? The worst part is, he doesn’t have a choice. Without taking a ridiculous amount of time to survey the room with his hands, he wouldn’t be able to find anything, and that still isn’t enough sometimes. I have a lot of respect for a blind person that can go through life with a positive attitude. Honestly, I don’t know which type of blindness would be worse, being like the first guy who could see until he was about 18, or being born without vision. I would like to know what the consciousness of a person who is blind from birth is like. When I close my eyes, I still see things with my “mind’s eye”. I visualize everything I think about. Does a blind person do the same? I also wonder if blind people who could see at one point remember things they saw. Can they look back and still describe objects and color, or does that memory/ability fade?
The second guy also brought about some interesting points. A young child really doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand their senses. They don’t know that they are smelling or seeing or hearing things, but their brain still perceives the input. I suppose that it is similar to a primitive animal hearing its prey or predator and acting instinctively on it, but not knowing what hearing is. My heart went out to the guy when he talked about how he felt a little like he was neglecting his child because he couldn’t see. How is he supposed to know what she wants or where she is without being able to see? It was also interesting when he said he smelled for the bear. I don’t think I have ever really thought to smell for something. Because I have vision, the olfactory sense is more of a reflex than a tool. I have literally tried smelling for things upwards of 5 times since listening to the show. It’s more fun when my mom is cooking, because regular day to day life smells pretty boring.
Terms: olfactory, consciousness, perceive, “mind’s eye”, senses.
As you can deduce from the stories that this man told, blindness is something that is not only an annoyance but also something that can affect everyone you love as well. In the case of the hotel room, it is obvious that living without sight messes with your entire perception of reality. When he went to bed, he couldn't find the phone as much as he tried. However, when he awoke, the phone seemingly appeared out of thin air. Of course this was only dude to the fact that the man could not feel out the entire wall that the the table with the phone was located. Blindness would be a very annoying thing to live with, not only because of the frustration but also due to you never really knowing if what you perceive in your mind is what is actually there, which can be dangerous at times.
Another negative aspect of blindness was shown when he told the story of his daughter. It was hard for him to even try to get his daughter to perceive his disability. When the man hugs the wrong child at the school is one moment where the lack of sight could become dangerous if not looked at correctly. Someone could easily see that as kidnapping which was far from the truth. The only way he could tell that he was hugging the right child was through his other, less effective, stimuli such as touch or smell. The only thing that blind people can perceive is what is produced from these other stimuli. It is a lot harder to picture a place in their head when they can't use sight to perceive your surroundings. All they can do is touch the surrounding area and try to piece together what is around them. Although even this way they are living in an alternate reality because they can't pick out the things such as colors. Their perception of their surroundings are much duller than other people.
The alternate perceptive reality of a blind person is very interesting. The man really described everything I thought a blind person would do in these situations. The stories he gave really gave me an appreciation for the gift of sight that I have. I wouldn't want to live in a world without sight. Sight is the largest stimulus in transducing stimuli to reality in the brain so that we can perceive the world and admire its beauty. Of all the senses that I would choose over the others, sight is definitely the one. We take sight for granted every single day but sometimes you really need to open your perspective a bit to people who have disabilities such as blindness so we can be thankful every day for the gift of sight. Our personal reality would be totally different if we couldn't see. Think of all the things that you could no longer enjoy looking at. Your wife, your children, your house, your car, even your back yard. All of this would be almost inconceivably different. You would almost feel like an invisible man.
Another topic that I find interesting is color blindness. Color blindness isn't blindness but it is a decreased ability to see or perceive colors. Color blindness can stem from cone dysfunction or damage to the eye. Color blindness actually affects a decent amount of people in the world. Women tend to be more susceptible due to the gene that contain photo-pigments are on the x-chromosome. Women have two x-chromosomes which means they are more likely to have a missing pigment, thus not being able to perceive that certain pigment. It's very interesting that some researcher has shown that people with color blindness of the red-green variety, actually have an increased ability to pick out objects in camouflage. Some researchers believe this is actually an evolutionary trait that allows increased survivability in the wild. I personally like my colors so I am glad to not have color blindness but it is considered a minor disability with very little lethal consequences arising from the condition.
Terms: blindness, perception, reality, sight, touch, stimuli, transducing, x-chromosome. Color blindness, photo-pigment,
This episode of This American Life was about a blind man named Ryan Knighton. Ryan Knighton became blind at the age of eighteen and has been dealing with blindness
ever since. At the beginning of this episode is starts to discuss one time when Ryan got lost in his hotel room. Ryan tells about how he had just arrived to his hotel room and was going to find the phone and call his wife. He began to find tables and feel for a phone. He checks multiple tables and is not able to find a phone, so he lays down on his bed and falls asleep. The next morning he woke up to a phone ringing he listened to the ring to find where the phone was located. The phone was sitting on a table that he had fully searched the night before. After hanging up the phone he turned around and walked to where his bed was located but his bed wasn't there. Instead of a bed being there he felt a wall. He searched to find his bed because he knew that is where it was last night, but as he felt along the wall he only found another wall not his bed. When listening to this episode it made me feel bad for Ryan because I would be terrified if I was in a hotel room by myself and could not find my way around. Although Ryan had been blind since age eightteen, I think that it would still be tough having to deal with situations such as these.
After talking about the hotel room, Ryan starts to describe how he has to tell his daughter that he is blind. His daughter was two at the time and he didn’t know how to tell a two year old about blindness. One day Ryan told his daughter “Papa sees what you see when your eyes are closed but mine are open”. After saying that he realized there was no way she was going to understand what he was saying. Ryan told a funny story about his daughter saying “Bear”, while she was riding on his back. He thought there was a bear around them because where they live it is very possible to see a bear. Well, turns out she had just dropped her teddy bear. When listening to this story I thought about how hard it had to be in this situation. It had to be hard because as a parent you want to protect your child, but in Ryans situation he didn’t know how to protect her. He was unable to see where this “bear” was located so he didn’t know what to do. One day his daughter realized his blindness but it still didn't quite make sense to her.
While listening to this episode it made me think about how difficult it must be to suffer from blindness. It never really occured to me how difficult it would be to have your children understand that you cannot see the way they do. It must also be difficult to be places alone such as Ryan in the hotel room. Although it would be hard, I thought about how much your other senses would factor in. I strongly believe that your other senses besides sight would become key your daily life. Hearing would become key in locating where you are by using localization to listen for sounds that may give you information as to what is going on. For example, when the phone rang Ryan was able to listen to the ring to detect where the phone was located to answer it. Warm receptors and cold receptors would be very important for a blind person because they allow the person to be able to know the temperature. The other sensory receptor would be a big part of a blind persons life because it would still allow the stimulation caused by the senses to be changed into information that can be processed by the brain.
Psychological terms used: sensory receptors, warm receptors, cold receptors
Invisible Made Visible- the story of a blind man. The story starts off with the man attempting to find a phone within his hotel room so he can call his wife. He does not find the phone and goes to bed. In the morning the phone is ringing on the coffee table which he swears that the phone was not there. He ended up not finding a third of the hotel room he was staying in and had a morning that seemed like a deep struggle but this is a daily occurrence not being able to find things or thinking he knows how the room is shaped but actually not understanding the layout. He states that being blind is not all that bad, but the embarrassment of being blind is what is worst to him. Ryan Knighton tells the stories of his daughter growing up and her realization that her father was blind. He seemed to be very accepting that he was blind but he had some very interesting stories which eventually lead up to his daughter realizing that her father was blind. Prior to her daughters realization that her daddy cannot see he tells the story of him and his daughter on hike in the Canadian woods, where bears wonder throughout the area, his daughter begins to start panicking that there is a bear, Ryan begins to panic and tries to get out of the area but no matter which direction he goes his daughter panics, he soon realizes that his daughter actually dropped her teddy bear. His daughter who is now three years old has realized that he cannot see. He has waited for her realization of this for some time and now hopefully he won’t feel that he is neglecting love for his daughter. Even though it’s not stated I feel that people who are blind have a much high sensation and perception, they cannot rely on their vision to help them so they must rely on sensation and perception, feeling touching smelling and using all other types of sense to help create an image. The book illustrates that physical stimulus, sensation, transduction, and perception are all from visual use, the input is through the eyes but can it not be a through the touch or smell? Another question is that do blind people sense less because they are blind? As in is their Absolute threshold smaller than the average person due to lack of visual sensation, would this also mean they would be able to concentrate better on a certain topic?
Terms- Sensation, perception- stimulus- transduction- physical stimulus- absolute threshold- visual sensation
Sight is undoubtedly of value to us. Without it, the sensation and perception of the world is completely different, and the same can be said with all of the senses. But sight is so important that the change is more drastic. It was interesting to hear about Ryan’s day to day experiences as a blind person as well as the effect it had on his relationship with his daughter. Although it may be humorous (and even Ryan himself admitted that he embraced the slapstickiness of the situation), it could be very frustrating or even dangerous, especially if you aren't born blind but somehow become blind later in life. At least if you were born blind, you would know nothing else and would have a better grasp on how to manage it throughout your life. I think about how important the senses are to us and how we take them for granted, and it’s interesting to reflect on how a task that would seem easy to someone with that sense may prove a challenge to someone who doesn't, or how one of those senses might be needed at a crucial moment (such as a nearby bear). I also think about how my interactions with others as well as my day-to-day activities would change. For example, I play video games and look at my computer quite a lot, and that would be quite hard to do if I couldn't see. I also wouldn't be able to look at anyone I talk to or understand hand gestures, see their emotions, etc. All in all, it would be a quite different experience for me. I am lucky to have my sight (although there is nothing wrong with not having it), but it’s always interesting to think about the alternative.
Terms: sensation, perception, sight
Listening to this segment from This American Life made me think of my cousin, who is blind. She doesn’t really open up about her experiences of being blind, so I’m just able to observe and do what I can to help. To hear someone’s experience helped me understand what my cousin has gone through for almost her whole life. The fact that this guy is able to be so optimistic and positive about his life despite the fact that he is unable to see, is really inspirational. There is a whole other world that he isn’t able to physically see, but with his imagination and uplifting spirit, he can see it. He has a daughter and a wife that he cares for even through his troubling times. Even when something did not go the exact way he has planned for it, he still moved on. As I was listening to him speak it made me think about my life and how I see things. Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. I can’t imagine trying to go through life at college without my vision. It would definitely take a toll on my mental and emotional health as well. That would be a huge adjustment and it would take lots and lots of practice to get comfortable with doing anything on my own. It made me appreciate that fact that I am able to see, but it also made me appreciate my cousin as well. I’ve never heard her complain about being blind. These are the kind of people that inspire me to be a better person because if they can make it through life with a better attitude than me sometimes, and they are visually impaired, then why can’t I stay positive throughout the day and be the best person I can be. To them, the unsighted world is their sighted world. They have their whole mind and imagination to make up any picture they want in their brain. Learning to deal with this type of impairment takes time, but they’ve done it. And yes, everyday they have to learn how to cope or deal with something new, but they know they can do it. Any blind person could just give up and say this type of life is not worth it, but they didn’t and they haven’t. It can be difficult to understand how someone would be able to live without being able to see anything, but in their minds they can see. Sometimes I find myself just going through the motions of everyday, but this made me stop and think about what I see and how I see them. I was able to connect his story with my experiences with my cousin’s story to better appreciate my vision and to respect them even more.
Psych Terms: visually impaired, physically, mentally, emotionally, imagination
After listening to the radio show over the inviable man, I realized how even the smallest deeds are challenges faced by people who lost their eye sight. Your eye sight is something you never want to take for granted. When Ryan started reflecting on the time he got lost in his hotel room, and had to walk along the walls of the entire room, feeling and grasping on to thing to find the simplest object, like the telephone. It was like he was being pranked, and everything was just moved around. Grabbing my phone when I set it down is an everyday routine, but for Ryan it seemed more like an obstacle he faced plenty of times. Just how he had to map out the room to remember where everything was. When he swore the bed was right by hum, but there was also another couch, coffee table, right across from the bed. He had no idea, because when he was feeling against the wall the first night looking for the phone he reached the bed, and he thought the wall has ended. He had no clue what anything looked like, he just had to picture it in his mind, and try and remember. Everything would be in a different perspective if we were not capable of our sight. The world we be such a different place for us.
When he got to the part about having a daughter, and trying to explain to a two year old that he cannot see, would be rather challenging. Also when I visualized what feelings he might have being a father, and not even being able to see your daughter grow up, made me feel sad for Ryan, but he seemed to cope with it, and bring humor into his situation. His daughter also made it feel like neglect when he couldn’t do some of the things she was trying to do. For example with the nerf ball, and she wanted to play and he had to idea that she threw/rolled the ball to him, and she got upset and started crying. She was too young to understand that she couldn’t see, so at the day care when he went to pick her up, and the little boy was around the dad, and his daughter was crying, and him feeling bad about her seeing another child all over her papa made her sad. One thing that stood out for me was when they were on their morning walk and she exclaims, BEAR!!! He explains how he can see smears, and kind of blackish shapes so he is blind, but the light from the outside might make out shapes and he can try and make out what they are. He didn’t understand that she dropped her teddy bear, and she was upset, but she was freaking out because he thought a huge bear was near them. So at dinner she finally got it, he asked to pass a cookie at dinner just pinching the air waiting for it, and she said papa can’t see! She then would help him, and draw his fingers along the TV screen. Ryan was an eye opener, and very inspirational. He made humor out of him being blind, and tried his best to overcome his obstacles, and trying to raise his daughter, and her learning that he cannot see. I couldn’t imagine, but seeing someone live that lifestyle and still up and going was amazing to listen about.
Terms: senses, blind, blindness, perception
Listening to this show has really got me thinking of the little things that I take for granted. I couldn’t imagine starting to go blind at this age, and get worse over time until I would have no sight at all. It would be so hard to go from seeing, to becoming blind especially at such a young age. Little things like using social media on your phone, watching Netflix, and even just going to school would be such a hard transition. Having to learn how to read brail as well as you can read words could takes years, and I know I wouldn’t have the patience for it and that I would just get frustrated. I give Ryan props for staying in a hotel room alone. I know he’s been blind for a while and is an independent man, but it would still be very nerve wracking not having someone there to help to you if you need it. I would get so frustrated with not being able to find the phone that I would have given up like he did too. He mentioned also that at another hotel that he wasn’t able to locate the door, and that’s what would really freak me out because I would feel like I was locked in. I couldn’t imagine how hard it is to have a child that you can’t physically see grow up. I like the fact that when Ryan is able to joke about his experiences, and it must be really hard for him trying to explain to his daughter about how he can’t see, but it was so cute how she put his hand to the TV and drew over whatever she was asking about. I also thought it was hilarious how he hugged another kid when picking up his daughter from day care.
Listening to this broadcast really opened my eyes to what blind people have to go through every day in order to be independent. I thought it was funny how he used groped and mauled as words to describe finding the phone. It was cool how he talked about trying to smell the bear, showing how when one of the five senses is gone all the others pick up the slack and are intensified.
One thought I have from listening to this show is if his daughter has a chance of becoming blind too. I also want to know how he met his wife, and just more about the daily struggles he goes through. It would have been cool to hear from her too. I wish he would have said what it was that caused him to go blind, because it’s interesting how he used to be able to see but now he can’t. It reminds me of an episode off of Little House on the Prairie when Mary first goes completely blind and how worried the family is, but later on in the seasons she’s able to do things on her own. I couldn’t imagine not being able to see, it would defiantly be even harder from going to a sighted world to an unsighted one because you got to experience it and you know what you are missing out on. I now value my ability to look at my Instagram and all the other pointless things I spend time looking at daily.
I personally have considered what it would be like to be blind. Familiar surrounding would not be so hard to navigate. It would be like coming home late at night and having to make it to the light switch in the dark or turning off the lights them having to make it to the bed. These are not difficult tasks because I already know my house so well. THe man in the hotel room made me think about what it would be like in a strange place by yourself. It is difficult to fathom a situation in which you think you know an area but them struggling when it is not as you originally thought. Navigation becomes a much more difficult task.
Something that I have never thought about that the man with the daughter brought to my attention is trying to care for some while being blind. Especially when someone may not understand the concept of being blind. Some insight I have gained is that there are two sides to blindness. The first one is how it affects myself. This is how I deal with and overcome obstacles I might encounter. The second one is how it affects the people around me. I realize my blindness would affect everyone around me and how we interact.
I have never thought about the effect of ones own outlook on their blindness and how different situations might sway that outlook. The man in the hotel seemed frustrated when one sense failed him and his sense of touch did not live up to the the task. What he perceived the room to be was not completely true because the sense he was relying on didn’t give him the whole picture. The other man took a more humorous outlook on his situation.
Blindness is something difficult for people with good vision to understand. It is a whole different way of perceiving the world.
Terms: Adapt, sense, vision, perception, blindness
The experiences about the guy in the hotel room and with his daughter make me think how life is so important. Life is very important and we should not take advantage of it. Ryan Knighton, the man who lost his eyesight when he was very young, now has to overcome his struggles about not being able to see every day of his life. His stories make me realize that not everyone knows what you are going through and there will be many struggles in your life and you should just take it day by day. This is very true for Ryan because he has to deal with being blind but also has to deal with his daughter understanding that he cannot see and will never be able to see.
His description of him being blind changes my understanding of the sighted vs. unsighted world by how he reacts to problems. Just because he cannot see doesn’t mean he gives up. For example Ryan doesn’t give up on his daughter when she gets frustrated over his actions. It also changes my understanding that people who are blind can do anything that regular people, who can see, do. They just have to find a better way to do things that will help them.
After listening to this show I found a new admiration towards people who are blind. I’ve never heard any stories from people who cannot see and Ryan’s story brings a whole new perspective on how they act and overcome obstacles. I also loved the ending about his daughter. At the end of Act 1, Ryan’s three-year-old daughter finally understood that he couldn’t see anything and instead of freaking out she grabs her dads hand and traces it on the TV screen. This is all Ryan ever wanted was for his daughter to finally understand his obstacles.
Psychological Terms: Sighted vs. Unsighted
The blind man has a difficult time performing day to day functions. When he was telling the story about how he couldn’t find the bed or the phone in his hotel room it reminded me of Grand Theft Auto Five. When he walks into a room he has no idea what is around him, he has to explore every square foot of the room before he has a good representation in his head, and if he doesn’t explore a certain area he doesn’t know what is there. Similarly, in Grand Theft Auto Five, you start the game with a blank map, and the only way to fill in the map is to explore places and everywhere you go that part of the map is filled in. When a person with sight walks into a room they can immediately know what is in the room, but if a blind person goes somewhere they have to use a combination of their experiences and their sense of feel to develop a thought about what the room is like.
I used to think that blind people were completely helpless for the most part, but this show changed my opinion about that. He proved to me that sight isn’t necessary to be a functioning member of society. This man is able to travel on his own, and stay in a hotel room by himself without any intervention or help from another person. Not only is he able to take care of himself, but he is also able to raise a daughter. There are a lot of people that have the full use of all their senses that aren’t able to raise a child, but he can even though he is blind. The stories he told were funny and entertaining, but they really did point out how difficult it would be to raise a child as a blind man. His daughter wasn’t able to comprehend why “daddy” couldn’t figure out how to kick the ball back or couldn’t pick her out in a crowd. When she finally did understand the concept that he couldn’t see she was understanding, and she even tried to help her dad to see what was on the TV by rubbing his hand over it. This man was able to teach himself how to live as a blind man, all while raising a daughter.
Terms: Blind, sense
I really liked listening to this show. I though it was a good show to listen to because it was interesting and it was funny at the same time. It gave a good sense of the mans struggles in his everyday life but also his bigger more frustrating struggles. I think that the experience in the hotel room would have been very frustrating and embarrassing, like the man said. I couldn’t imagine being lost in a hotel room, or just not even being able to comprehend where I am. I think that the though of being lost and disorientated in an area when I had just stayed the night and familiarized myself with the night before would just be horrible. You say to think about what these make me think about, but I can even imagine what his life was like in those instances. The only thing it makes me think about is how frustrated I would get in the hotel room. When he talks about his daughter though and shares the little stories I find them comical. I think that if I were him in those instances I would almost have to laugh at myself for a moment because of how the circumstances when down and not being able to understand his daughter but my misunderstanding her so much. My Favorite story he shared was when he hugged the wrong kid at daycare. It seems hilarious but must have terrified his young and very impressionable daughter. I think it would be so much harder than I though it would be to be blind, even the little things such as recognizing your child at daycare is such a complex task. I didn’t think of all the things that are changed in life, and how hard it is to complete task and interact with people. I have an aunt who is blind so I understood some of the struggles but when she went blind it was when her kids and I were older so the support and understanding was a lot different than this mans daughter and her understanding and interactions. I think that we take for granted the little things in our visual life that the unsighted people have to use their other senses to understand, and struggle at that sometimes. I think that when he told the story of the nerf ball and his daughter that would be the hardest. Not understanding why your child is so upset and not being able to fix it because your perception of what is going on around you is blocked off. In a way his daughter and him were almost the same, the both had misunderstanding of the world around them.
Perception, senses
Listening to the radio show really opened my eyes on how horrible it would be to be blind. Everything becomes a hassle, and nothing becomes “visible” until he touches it. It would be hard to always be so disoriented whenever in a newish environment. Since he went blind overtime, he had to relearn how to interact with those around him, along with his surroundings. The simple tasks that are always taken for granted because of eyesight become near impossible, and everything is a walk in the dark. I feel when he is alone it is difficult to maintain a normal schedule. Cooking, eating, using the bathroom would require assistance or a great deal of effort to find or complete.
The saddest part about the show is when he talks about his daughter. It would be rough trying to explain this symptom with someone so young. It wasn’t until she turned three that she finally understood what he was going through. This had to be an awesome moment for him. Her realization shows that she is growing up, and now the dad’s life can be a little easier.
Psychology Terms: Symptom, Blindness
Personally, as the man was telling his stressful story of attempting to find the phone in the hotel room, it frustrated me a lot. And if it frustrated me, I can not even imagine how frustrating it would be for a blind man to do that himself. This man had to make an image in his mind of what was around him, not using his sight sense, but his sense of feeling.
Then with the father and his daughter, attempting to tell his daughter that he was blind was also frustrating for me since I don’t have the blind perspective of things. I see things, I don’t see nothing so I can very well understand the frustration that his daughter had when she was calling for her bear that had dropped and when she saw her daddy hug another little boy. This man’s daughter was in the sensory-motor stage, entering the preoperative stage. She was beginning to understand the world with perception, yet still based her understanding on senses. This was demonstrated when she questioned if mommy saw and if she saw, after she discovered that daddy didn’t see. There was major miscommunication between the blind father and child, who didn’t understand at first that created utter frustration, not just for the misunderstanding child, but also for the father. He noted that when they were “playing” with the nerf ball, he felt like he was neglecting his child all day because he had no idea what was actually happening in the world around him. Since he can’t physically see his surroundings, clues and hints around him form a perception of the physical life around him. When his daughter cried bear, he assumed there was a real life bear around them, which sounded common in his area of the world. He never could actually tell why the child was crying, because he couldn’t physically see the bear was her stuffed bear that had fallen to the ground.
His description of what it is like to be blind helped me understand how fortunate I am to be able to physically see my surroundings. The sighted world is very interesting, elaborate and colorful, where the unsighted world is not. The rods and cones are the sensory receptors, and these receptors aid to allow the sighted world, giving the idea of color. Without these, people’s worlds would be unsighted. The blind man’s cones do not work, since he does not see fine detail or color. This blind man does not show frustration or anger at the fact that he cannot see. This changed my perspective on the thought of unsighted worlds, I assumed they were sad that they could not see what the rest of the world sees, but they have nothing to compare their sight to, so they are not as frustrated and upset as I would assume them to be. I would be interested in being blind for a day, just to have the same sensations and perceptions as blind people do to be able to compare to my everyday world.
Key terms: sensory motor, preoperative, perception, sensory receptors, rods, cones, sensation
9/22/14
What I learned from this podcast is that you have to be very literal and complete when communicating with a blind person. I also learned that even the simple things like finding the phone in the hotel room can be a very difficult task for a blind person. Being able to see is not something that people actually appreciate until its gone. Our perception of the world would be completely different if you could not see. I enjoyed when he shared his experiences because it really makes you think about how difficult things would be if you were blind. One of my high school friend had a blind father. He couldn't have a job because he could not see, so he was at home most of the time. I do not think I could do that, I hate just sitting around home every night of the week even now. I always have to be doing something, hanging out with someone, or going to some sporting event. Not that you couldn't do these things if you were blind, it would just be a lot differs t then the way they are now.I am very grateful that I can see, it really makes life a whole lot easier.
Terms: perception
While listening to the audio recording, it was interesting trying to imagine what this guy was going through in the hotel. Ryan Knighton was trying to find the telephone in the hotel room so he could call his wife and talk to her. With him being blind, he had to feel for the phone, and as Ryan was explaining what he was doing, I was trying to imagine what he was exactly doing. These experiences that Ryan was having made me think about what it is like to have vision and to be able to have a perception of things. Ryan wasn’t exactly able to perceive where everything was in the hotel room when he was trying to find the phone. The next morning when he woke up, the phone started ringing and it spooked him out. This made me think of a bunch of things that could have happened. One of my first thoughts was that one of the walls had moved and Ryan didn’t know about it. I knew that couldn’t be an option because that would never happen. When Ryan said that there was two of each thing on each side of the bed, I would have never thought about that.
When I was listening to the recording, my understanding of the sighted vs. unsighted world changed a little bit. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I was blind and I had to feel everything just to know where I was. When Ryan is trying to explain to his daughter what it is like to be blind, it is an interesting experience. When the daughter is on his back and she yells, “bear,” there were many thoughts that went to his mind. How is he supposed to know that it is just her teddy bear right away. My first thought was that there was an actual bear behind that that was going to attack them. That’s one of the negatives about being blind. You are never able to know what is going on around you and if something was to suddenly attack you, you wouldn’t be able to react to it. Listening to this recording has also given me a new appreciation for the vision that I have and that I am not blind. I feel sorry for the people that have to deal with blindness and have to be helped with everything.
Terms: Perception, Vision
I enjoyed listening to the radio post and Ryan Knighton’s experiences being blind. It was very interesting to hear how a blind man gets through life and the challenges he faces everyday. After hearing his stories, I have learned how extremely important your senses are, especially vision. While listening to the prologue and learning that this man started going blind at 18, I was inspired. It’s hard enough being blind, but having been able to see for 18 years and then just not, is terrifying. I would assume you would have to change everything about how you think about the world when going blind. He says during his interview that when you are blind, you cannot make assumptions about anything, it gets you in trouble. He says if you make a mental map of something and it ends up being wrong, you live inside of that mistake. He also says that being blind isn’t the problem, it’s the embarrassment of being blind that is hard. I can see how he would consider the embarrassment being a huge factor. If I was a grown person lost in a hotel room, I would be embarrassed as well. Your sense of independence is lost, and for many, that is degrading.
My thoughts about being blind versus being able to see have changed a little after hearing about the experiences of being blind. I have new thoughts about it that I’d never considered. I think about being blind quite often and I can’t imagine going through life without being blind. I’ve never thought about how many things have to work inside my eye for me to see. The cornea, lens, and rods and cons, need to all work together for sensory receptors to turn the light waves into sight. If one of these things stops working or goes wrong, my vision could be lost.
He said one aspect of being blind isn’t like mapping out and area in his brain, it’s like walking around inside a video game. He says things only exist when he touches them. If he can’t see it, and his other senses can’t get a sense of something, it’s like it’s not there. For example, he talks about a time when his daughter passes him a foam ball. He cannot see the ball or hear the ball come near him, so to him, it doesn’t exist. Thinking about this is sort of confusing. Your senses are what tell your brain things exist and without these senses, you don’t know about anything. This is the idea of Transduction. Transduction is taking physical stimuli, in which you can visualize in this case, and being able to react is very important. Being blind, he cannot see such stimuli and so neurons that send the signals to the brain can’t be sent. This is one aspect of blindness that I hadn’t thought about before reading Chapter 5 and listening to this radio post.
Overall, I learned a great deal about vision from the stories told. The radio post was funny and very interesting to listen to. Learning about the difficulties of being blind, I am grateful that I all my senses work properly and I can live life normally.
Psych Terms: Blind, Vision, Cornea, Lens, Rods and Cons, Sensory Receptors, Transduction, Physical Stimuli, Neurons
The section we had to listen to was about a man who has been blind since he was 18. He Talked about a time in a hotel room trying to find a phone, but was couldn't find it until the next day when he got a call. He also talked about a time when he was walking with his daughter and he misunderstood what she meant. The stories made me appreciate my senses much more and realize how much I really need them. Unless you’re someone who is already lacking them, it’s impossible to imagine what it’d be like without your senses. She mentions that Ryan Knighton began to lose his sight when he was 18, and it must be horrible to be born with a sight, and then start to lose it before you are even really begin your adult life. I wear glasses myself and have trouble seeing without them, but in no way do I have a right to compare my struggle with that of this man, or any other blind man. Listening to this made me think about what else could cause blindness, other than being born with it. Glaucoma deals with the fluid pressure of one or both eyes, and can cause blindness or loss of peripheral vision. Cataracts is a condition that affect the lenses the eyes, which can make it difficult to see colors, to see through glares, and in general makes vision blurry. Macular degeneration commonly occurs in the elderly and is a large cause of full or partial blindness Hopefully Ryan can live a healthy and full life without his sight, or maybe here in the near future we will even have a cure for blindness. We all take our sight for granted, and it’s not a bad thing, however I think everyone should take a moment to think about what it would be like without a sense, and get a new appreciation for them, because who knows, one day you may lose it. I truly cannot imagine living without vision, or without any one of my senses for that matter.
Terms used: senses, blindness, glaucoma, macular degeneration, retina, lens, eyes, cataracts, peripheral vision, vision.
When I listened to invisible made visible, I enjoyed the speakers how they made a tough subject funny. Like Ryan, the blind man, being blind would be really tough especially with a young daughter who doesn’t understand but he made his speech enjoyable to listen to. When he was in the hotel room looking for the phone it sounded like he had checked everywhere a phone should be. Once he found it though and he turned and ran into a wall I was just as lost as he was. Blind people can only go on what they think is there and when they get that wrong they don’t know where they are. I was picturing the room as he explained and when he said he ran into a wall trying to get back to his bed I was confused thinking someone was playing a joke on him, but eventually he found he was in a part of the room he didn’t know about. With his daughter who doesn’t understand blindness yet it would be hard like when she rolled the ball but it went right by him because he couldn’t even hear it. It would also be scary where he lives because of the bears and when his daughter started saying bear on the walk through campus. I wouldn’t know what to do if I was blind in that situation because you don’t know if there is one or where it is. These experiences make me more thankful that I am able to see and how much harder life would be if I wasn’t able to see. Now I understand that blind people can only really guess on what room they are in or what something really looks like, while people who can see may take it for granted that they know where everything is and what it looks like. I thought this was fun to listen to because it was interesting to hear how he goes through life being blind. It was also fun because he made it funny and easy to listen to. Terms used: Blindness
We listened to episode #464 called Invisible Made Visible for our blog post. Starts out with a man who is blind feeling around a hotel room. The stories these people tell seems tough because of what they all have to do just to find the things we take for granite everyday. The man keeps getting lost in the room and it seems as if someone is in the room moving things around. He just couldn’t find everything in the room with touch. He missed one table and that was where the phone was that he couldn’t find. I felt very badly for the guy. What a tough disability to live with.
The experiences from Act 1 of the 464 episode I thought about was how truly lucky I was to have all of my senses. The men in the video don’t have proper working rods, cones, and retinas. The amazing sights and pictures that we never truly appreciate, but these men will never experience the feeling of seeing snow, the sunshine, rain, and seeing lightning. They’ll never see the faces of the people who they love the most which would absolutely kill me. They make their own images in their heads along with the shapes and colors of the people or things.
His description of being blind went rather well with what I always thought it would be like to be blind. As much as people say your senses increase or try to make up for the senses you may not have, but the man said he still had struggles when he tried to use his other senses to hide the sight sense. He had to feel the shapes and visualize images in his head. He bumps into things and feels his way around rooms and so on. He must use he pressure and heat receptors to make a rough sketch of the room and to feel for his daughter, wife, and or other hot and cold things. He can make the world anything he wants to be in his head, but it’s sad knowing he’ll never get to experience the real thing.
The show really made me appreciate and realize how lucky most of us are to have all of our senses. My ability to have all of my senses working completely together makes me feel very lucky. I would like to learn when in the womb, will the baby begin to experience the incorrectly development in the optic area. We could have perfect eyes with nothing wrong. But the optic area in the brain didn’t develop fully and causes the person to be blind.
Terms used- Retinas, Cones, Rods, Pressure, Heat Receptors, Optic Area
In this blog we listened to episode #464 of This American Life called Invisible Made Visible. We learned that we who are able to see have it way better and nicer then the people who cannot. For instance the man talked about being in the hotel room and not being able to call his wife because he could not find the phone. This happened because he had absolutely no idea that there were two coffee tables in the room. Without being able to see its easy to understand how it would be hard for him to know that there were two in the room one which held the phone. I feel that it would be very frustrating if I tried to reach out to grab something that I could not see. Everyday this man is faced with the fact that he can not see what others do. He cant tell where he’s going, what color something is, or where anything is at in a room. That would be a struggle for any person to handle and be quite overwhelming.
When talking about his daughter the man expresses when he picks her up from day care expecting her to run into his arms. When he felt a child embrace into his arms he figured it was his child and held it tightly. Only to hear the sound of his daughters cry. When he kept hugging what child was in his arms he could only hear the cry get louder and louder from across the room. HE was not hugging his daughter he was hugging someone else’s child which made his daughter really upset.
The same thing happened when he walked her to day care and she soon got super angry and upset about her bear. To him he thought she was trying to say there was a bear in front of them. This would be frustrating because that can be a life or death situation for both him and his daughter and he can not see which way to go to protect the little girl strapped to his back. Only in the end to understand that she had just dropped her stuffed bear.
Being blind this man has to rely on other senses in his body to tell him what is wrong. I think this is interesting because without the presents of one sense your other senses seem to be stronger to replace the one that is lost. For instance the man has to use his hearing to sense that his daughter was telling him something was wrong. He has to feel around a hotel room just to find the phone and cants get easily frustrated when things go wrong. I feel like this would be a challenge for most people who don’t know what its like not being able to see. We take the most simple things for granted without even realizing how hard life would be if we couldn’t see even the most simple things
Terms: blind
After Watching 464: Invisible made visible his descriptions of being blind has made me so thankful for my vision. The man uses his other senses to make up what the room is. He uses his pressure receptors with his hands all over to make sense of what he is living in. He has to see every detail of his environment in his mind. He wants to be a good father to his daughter, but is a hard struggle because of his vision impairment. It would be so hard to have to map out everything in your environment. He couldn’t even get to the phone. It makes me sad because it is so easy for us to just go pick up the phone when it rings, or pick up a toy for a crying child, and even write now blogging, A blind person has struggles, and it is easy now to see why they may have so much anxiety. When he said, “nothing is visible until I touch it,” really made me thankful for my vision. The fact that I get to see the world, my family, and friend’s everyday makes me grateful. This was an amazing thing to watch, My favorite part was when his daughter finally understood that he couldn’t see, That must have made him feel good to know that she could understand what is going on with him. I have had a personal experience with a blind 6-year-old little girl. She was the most amazing person I had ever met. She carried around a stuffed animal and she would just hold and feel your face, like she was trying to get a picture of you in her mind. Then she would smile, and give you a great big hug. Meeting her just made me want to to great things for her. I am so privileged to be able to have my vision and have a family who does, as well.
Terms: Pressure receptors, vision imparement,anxiety, blind
I don’t really know anyone that is blind, so I haven’t seen the struggle of daily life. If I see someone that is blind I always try to help them in any way that I can. I’ve been told to not feel bad for them and to act like they are a normal person (I have heard the same from people with other disabilities). But I can’t help but feel sad for them, especially if they were not born blind. People that are born blind have to adapt right from the start, but people who become blind from sickness or an accident have to adapt quickly.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my vision. I rely so much on it that if I would lose it I would feel complete helpless.
In his stories about the hotel room and his daughter he talked about them like they were nothing and an everyday occurrence. I guess being blind they might have been, but I would have been so scared and probably would have cried if caught in those situations.
The situation with the bear would have left me terrified and not wanting to experience that again.
Blindness is a daily issue for everyone who has it and people who don’t have deal with blindness take their sight for granted because they don’t assume that it would happen to them.
While listening to this radio program, I realized not only that being visually impaired is difficult, but that it is something that, for the most part, you get used to. As a person who can see, I can only see losing my vision from the perspective of someone who has had vision before, so I would be experiencing a loss. For many people with vision problems or no vision, that has always been the case, therefore they know no other reality. For those that have lost their vision, a learning curve is obviously necessary, but once they get over the initial shock of losing their vision, I'm sure it's something that can be learned with work. What really stood out to me during the radio show was the blind man saying that what kept him from learning to operate without vision wasn't the lack of vision itself, but the embarrassment of being blind. This stood out to me because it shows that some people would rather let others do things for them than try to do it themselves out of fear of looking silly while doing it. Another thing that really stood out to me was the man from Act 1 talking about how his daughter could not understand that he couldn't see but, at some point when she was about 3 years old, she realized that he couldn't see. He attributed this to his daughter developing empathy. I thought this was very interesting because it was a noticeable point in his daughter's development where she had an epiphany about her father. She obviously didn't understand completely right off the bat, but she understood the basic point.
terms: Development, Empathy,
This radio show really opened my eyes to a new perspective. No pun intended. I hadn’t really thought about what it would actually be like to not have sight. I never thought about all of the daily activities that are completely dependant on sight. Something as simple as finding the phone in a hotel room is difficult. Seeing is important for every activity a normal human does except for seeing. Having this major part of self being taken away suddenly or over time like Ryan Knighted would be cause for a huge life adjustment.
When Ryan Knighted explained his story about his hotel room when he walked around for a long time trying to find the phone it made me realize that my life is good. Although I can hardly see without my contacts, I have a quick fix by placing a small lense on my retina. Ryans life is not bad, just different. He has a different perception on the world. His perception is no sight, but a hyper sense of smell, touch, and hearing. Although he can’t see his daughter crying at daycare he can hear her on the other side of the room. He can also feel the fact that the child he is hugging is not his own. I am not positive that if I hugged different people I would be able to tell the difference between the two people. I have known my best friend Molly my entire life and hugged her hundreds of times. If I had to close my eyes and hug her and someone else, I don’t think I could tell the difference. This is because of the heightened sense of touch. The other sense have to overcompensate for the lack of sight.
Ryan’s experience about the bear in the parking lot is a scary realization of how important sight is for survival. Evolution and natural selection is supposed to create a better human being for survival. If a person can not see they can not run away or protect themselves from predators. This also means that he can not protect his daughter. Along with protection, this could be harmful for his daughters development. No fault of his own, he can not see his daughter reaching for him or engaging with him. Ryan discussed this in his part about the nerf soccer ball. His daughter had been crying all day just because he couldn’t tell his daughter was throwing a ball at him. His daughter could develop an avoidant attachment to him.
Although there are many negatives to being blind there are also a few good things that could from that experience. A blind person could get to know a person for their personality and not by first impressions of appearance. Being blind doesn’t mean the world is ending, it just means that they have a different psychological experience.
Psych terms: psychological experience, avoidant attachment, evolution, natural selection, development, perception, perspective, sense of sight smell and hearing, retna
I feel that like most people I have wondered what it would be like to be blind a number of times throughout my life. And these experiences, these funny little stories I don't think quite grasp how much you would have to change going from sighted to unsighted. I don't think I would have ever imagined that I would have to find a way around a hotel because I was blind. I really enjoyed how the guy described his perception of finding his way around was just like a video game where you couldn't see anything until you touched it. This gave me a very clear image of what it would be like.
The thing I found interesting about the guy and his daughter was actually how she reacted to his blindness and not knowing that he was blind. You can certainly understand as a young child being confused when your father hugs another little child and tells them he missed them. Or why your father is walking away from your teddy bear when you point and tell him bear! It also shows her development of realising that he can't see.
Many of the things in this podcast show me how much sight and all of out senses are used for communication, and how easily miscommunication can come about when one person can't see.
Terms: sight, senses, communication, development, perception
In listening to the radio show with the blind man I was very surprised as to how the interview started. When He was talking I imagined a typical two-bed hotel room. As the blind man said he was feeling his way around the hotel looking for a phone, I thought check the end table between the two beds. As he kept describing the room I realized there was only one bed. He talked about how the room had a cove with a second coffee table, different from the one he had found, and the phone was placed on that table. As he continues to talk about his experience in the hotel room I was very curious as to how he found the room in the first place. Did he ask someone for help getting to his room? The only conclusion I can think of was that he did have assistance. Another question I had was why did the blind man not ask for help in navigating his room. I thought what if I was blind and alone in a hotel. Everything would be so unfamiliar to me. I would have to ask someone for help in finding where everything in my room is. At the same time, however, I have stayed in countless hotel room, and I would imagine I’d be able to know where everything is. Since I expect to know where everything is, I have to assume the blind man thought the same thing.
The experiences the man had with his daughter I found to be very funny. His daughter had a very difficult time understanding her father’s situation. The blind man had tried multiple times to tell his daughter that he was blind, but she could not understand what he was talking about. He had told how his daughter would try to play with quiet nerf balls with him, but he could not hear the balls rolling so this made it very difficult for him to see what was going on. His daughter would get very upset when they had miscommunication problems. I can understand why she would get upset. It is kind of like the experience I had the other day at the football game. I was in the student section waiting for some friends to show up. They finally showed up after the student section was filled so when they called and we tried to find one another, it was difficult to find them. I’m on the phone trying to describe to them where I’m sitting and they are doing the same to me. There are many different miscommunications that occurred. But when we found each other our experience was similar to that of the daughter finally realizing that her dad couldn’t see. It just one of the moments where everything makes sense and you realize why all the miscommunication happened.
Invisible Made Visible made me think a lot about how fortunate I am to have eyesight. Absolutely everything I do has to do with how I see things and perceive them so I cannot even imagine not having eyesight of my own. I realized a lot about the perception of things while listening to this. When you don't have eyesight, you have to feel around for everything you need while us with eyesight can just walk over and grab it. The blind have to imagine where everything is in their head and really use their brain to make up that picture. If they leave out some part of the image in their head or don't feel all the way, they can end up leaving out a big part of what is actually there in real life. We have it so easy being able to have eyesight and we are able to go about things much faster I believe.
This interview really made me think about my own life and made me put myself in Ryans shoes. We really take the basic senses we have for granted. I could not even imagine how much harder my life would be if I did not have vision. I would not be able to do half of the things I do with out my vision. I also thought it was interesting how much better his other senses got because of the loss of vision it makes sense though because if you are unable to see you would have to use your sense of sound heavily to be able to guide you and help you figure out where you are. It also goes back to the consciousness chapter because without vision you have to be more consciousness of your surroundings in order to get around. All in all it was a very eye opening chapter no pun intended. I really tried to understand what Ryan was going through especially doing a simple task like picking up a phone to call someone.
Key terms: Senses, blindness, retinas, corneas, rods,visual impairment.
In TAL #464, we listen to the interviews of two men who have no vision in their eyes. Although the men were taking the seriousness of the situation and making it lighter for the audience, I was still petrified. My entire life, I have been terrified of going blind. There is so much in this world to experience with vision. Vision, in my opinion, is one of the greatest senses of stimuli we as humans can have. Going blind will forever be one of the worst fears I have.
The men in the story talk about their experiences with blindness. One of the men talks of his unfortunate experience of trying to locate a telephone in his phone room. He was having to rely on his pressure receptors to make a very rough sketch of how the room was set up just to locate the phone. The man had to bump into and feel around for every item in the room to lead him to accomplish his set goal. In a world where every second matters, the amount of time blind people must take to accomplish even the slightest of tasks is horrifying to me.
In the case of the man that describes his blindness and the effect it has had on his daughter, my heart was wrenching for the two. Our sense are so absolutely essential that they can impose factors on relationships in our lives, even between a father and daughter. I can only imagine hearing my daughter say “bear” and thinking that it was a real bear behind me, only to realize that she just wanted her toy bear that she had dropped!
The cruelness of this disability can have at the very least minor humorous effects, but ultimately can be extremely life threatening. It never ceases to amaze me how important our brain is and its ability to perceive things.
Psych Terms: blind, vision, stimuli, pressure receptor
Listening to this piece made me think a lot about my own life. I’ve been blessed for the opportunity to see and my eyes function properly. When they said he started going blind at 18, I was reminded it can happen to anyone at anytime which is kinda scary to think about how fast life can change. After listening to the piece in general, it would be a whole different world not being able to see. I often see stories where people take advantage of the blind by not giving them the correct amount of change back which is a sick thing to do because they can’t always tell.
After listening to both experiences, I think it would be a very frustrating life in general. It would constantly feel like someone is pulling a cruel joke on you when you feel the whole hotel room looking for the phone and still not being able to find it then not being able to find the bed once you’ve already had it. It would feel like a never ending maze and puzzle, no matter how well you know a place. Having to completely rely on touch and listening to find what you need. I think it would be hard as a parent, not only being able to watch your kid grow up and see them. But having her not understand the situation, making her upset thinking her dad doesn’t want her when he grabbed another child by mistake by trying to follow her voice or not noticing why she was upset when she dropped her stuffed animal. It’d be hard as a kid because just because they can see, they tend to just assume everyone can. They seem to have the mindset well they have eyes, I have eyes so why are they struggling so much? I think the bears in the dumpster would be a scary thing I would always worry about, you wouldn’t be able to see them and just have to rely on people telling you to stay away from the doors which could be scary if they don’t patrol as often as they should. I’m surprised they didn’t talk about other people in his life, because not only would it be hard for him but a spouse, coworkers and other family probably didn’t really know many people who can’t see, not a lot of people know what it’s like and it would be hard on them to adjust as well.
After listening to his stories, it is still possible to live an unsighted life, it is an adjustment and frustration like most disabilities are. I was a peer helper in high school and worked with a girl who was blind so I always knew it’d be a hard life to live. She always got around well after living with it her whole life. I didn’t realize just how hard it would be until hearing this piece. I think it could be really hard if you couldn’t hear well on top of that and just had to rely on touch. You wouldn’t know what you look like, what your kid looks like, it’d be hard to rely on other people and live in an unsighted life. Now I understand we shouldn’t take our eyesight for granted because nothing is permanent.
Invisible made visible
The experiences of this man really shows how much human beings rely on sight. Sight helps us maneuver places, grab things, and communicate and describe our experiences, we use it everywhere. The images we see sometimes even show up inside of our dreams. Sight is a privilege. This listening project made me think of how much being blind really complicates everyday activities and communication.
The way that he explains being blind came off as almost humorous, but it is not humorous at all. He explained how his lack of the sensation to see has affected his perception on things. Like the situation with the bear. He thought there was danger in the situation. He believed that an actual bear was standing behind him, he sensed danger, but really there was no danger at all he just could not see that the teddy bear was lying on the cement. Even though that he did not know at first there was any sense of danger, he tried using his other senses to get an idea about the situation. First he tried to feel which direction his little girl’s hands were pointing, and then he tried to smell the bear. It took him much longer to figure out the situation because of his lack of eyesight.
I could understand why his biggest problem with not being able to see, is the embarrassment behind it. He got lost inside of a hotel room, he thought he was being chased by a bear, and he hugged the wrong child at the daycare, all because he could not see. I think that we sometimes take these luxuries for granted. We do not realize how much it helps our everyday activities.
Terms: Perception, Sensation, senses, sight
Now I perceive being blind as a perpetual game of Marco Polo. Whenever I play Marco Polo I try to use all my senses fully since sight is not allowed. I pay attention to the sound of splashes in the water and try to figure out which waves are from my movements or the movements of those around me. A blind person would also use his other senses to his advantage. However, in a game of Marco Polo I normally get impatient and open my eyes to see again. Ryan does not have the luxury of being able to see again. He has to figure out where things are solely by the use of his tactile, olfactory, and auditory senses. It makes me glad that I can see and it also opens my eyes (pun not intended) to how much I depend on my eyesight to make it through the day. Without being able to see I would not be able to drive, go for road runs, paint, enjoy movies fully, handle a knife, read, and so many other things that I cannot think of right now. He has been blind for several years and he still has a hard time getting around a hotel room. Even the chapter for this week primarily focuses on the process of light waves being caught by the cornea, shining through the pupil, and all the rods and cones that take the information and send it to the optic nerve to be sent to the primary visual cortexes.
I also found it interesting how he noted that being blind is more embarrassing than it is tragic to be blind. He makes the most out of his little episodes of running away from a teddy bear and not knowing which child is his daughter; however, it would get a little redundant after a while. Personally, I am the type of person to be easily embarrassed with my 20/20 vision, and being blind would probably make me feel worse about my mistakes. However, being blind could also be an excuse for some of the goofy things that I would do. It was also interesting how he said he could not wait to tell his daughter that he was blind. I always thought that people would just know that someone is blind, but his daughter was at such a young age that she could not process the information. That created some problems to their relationship because the daughter felt rejected while the father did not know what was going on. If I were a parent I would be irritated.
Terms: Marco Polo (just kidding), tactile, olfactory, auditory, cornea, pupil, rods, cones, optic nerve, primary visual cortex
I listened to the Invisible made visible 464 prologue act one and two.
I never thought about what it would be like to be blind. It gives me a new perspective of how a blind person has to channel into all of there other sense to know what is going on. I feel like I take my sight for granted, our five senses are given to us to better our survival and to think they could be gone so quickly. Listening to the podcast has giving me real life perspective of what it is like to be blind. The man who walked into the hotel room and had no idea where things were located that would be annoying to me to have to do that with every new place that I encounter in. Maybe I only thing that way now because it is not something that I have to do to survive. I am a very prideful person, I will try 100 times before asking for help and to not be able to do something and have people help me all the time would annoy me as well.
I enjoyed listening to the experiences the guy had with his daughter. I could only imagine how difficult that could really be to explain something so complex to someone so young. After hearing all the stories of his miscommunication with his daughter, it surprised me when she simply said “papa can’t see”. It was like everything was over thought and she finally understood that he was blind so quickly. I thought it was beyond adorable when the little girl took his fingure to the tv and tried to explain to him what she was seeing.
After listening to Ryan Knighton talk about his experiences with being blind, I have a lot of sympathy for those who cannot see. The world is a completely different place for him and others like him. People in the sighted world definitely take their vision for granted while the unsighted use their other senses to make their way through the world. In the first story, Ryan cannot find the phone in the hotel room. This seems like such a simple task for someone like me to do but it almost got to the point of being scary for Ryan. I can’t believe is brave enough to get on a plane and travel alone. It’s awesome that he doesn’t let his disability stop him from living. In the second story, the little girl drops her teddy bear and Ryan thinks there’s an actual bear amongst them. This makes me think, what if there was actually a threat or danger? He wouldn’t even know until it was too late. I don’t think that by sharing this, Ryan wants people to feel bad for him but instead understand his perspective.
After listening to “Invisible Made Visible” interview it made me realize that most people can’t relate and or understand what people that are missing one of their senses. Not having eyesight it’s sad because imagining me having it is not something I would want to happen to me. I use my eyesight from the minute I wake up to the minute I wake up the next morning, and there are actually people that cant experience getting to see everything I am able to see. I feel bad for the people with no eyesight and wish I could do something so they could get all of their eyesight back. Hearing the father having so many troubles and struggles having to do everything sounds very stressful and I would honestly get very irritated. He practically had to imagine, think, and just guess where everything would be at and if he was wrong he would just have to keep guessing where else that thing would be at. Saying this it means they really have to use their brain to remember and think where everything is at and could be. They honestly struggle so much while we don’t and just at times take advantage of it by not caring while people without eyesight have it hard and us with eyesight can’t even imagine how that could feel and how difficult that would be to live like that. Either way I enjoyed the interview because it made me realize a lot. Especially getting to find out from a father and normal blind person how life is for him and what he has to go through and do.
Terms: eyesight, blind, senses.
When I was listening to the podcast about this topic, I realized how hard it actually would be for someone to go through life blind. Not just by being blind their whole life, but in the way that Ryan was because his vision started to go at age 18. It struck me as interesting, but also made me feel sorry for him when he talked about just trying to find the phone. A simple task that would’ve taken a person with regular functioning sensory receptors seconds, took him very long time. He simply assumed that there was four walls, and that there just was not a phone. It would be very frustrating for myself if I had to live my life trying to feel my way around, and bump into things to get a grasp on what is around me. The miscommunications between Ryan and his daughter, although were funny, also were very humiliating. His daughter was not yet old enough to understand that her father could not see, and she assumed that due to her stage in the developmental process, all things were as she saw them and experienced them. This cause a great deal of confusion between the two. But eventually his daughter began to understand and become aware that her father cannot see. Even though she did have this breakthrough, we are able to tell she is still in the beginning stages of brain and cognitive development because she put her dad’s hand up against a screen to try to ask him who someone was. These experiences made me think about how much harder my life would be if I was blind as well. College would definitely be a struggle, as we are only allotted so much time between classes, and they are fairly far apart. Not only are they a good distance from each other, but there are also streets and hazards in between that would make it dangerous to do. Despite just the fact that you would have to find a way to class (let’s say one had a seeing-eye dog) you would still have to take notes and learn. The only way that learning would be easier for a blind person would be if they happened to be an auditory learner. But most people are not so there is a good chance that everything from basic needs, to complex things, would be incredibly difficult to maneuver and do.
Terms: Auditory, Developmental Process, Cognitive Development, Sensory Receptors
After listing to the Prologue and Act 1 of the This American Life episode; Invisible Made Visible I started to reflect on his stories. What this man shared on the radio show made it clear that living with the disability of being blind can be very confusing and at times very frustrating at times.
When the man was in the hotel room I felt so bad for him when he was trying so hard to use all his senses to find the phone. To me it seemed like it was almost a cruel joke that he could not find it during the day than at night it started to ring. I felt like it was as if someone was trying to confuse him by making him think the wall had end and that coffee table did not exist and then it showed up that night. He made a very good point when he said “when being blind you cant just assume things”. All that I wanted is to just be there and help him find the phone because from his perception it did not exist but from mine it was right there on the table. Its crazy to think that for a person with their vision to imagine getting the phone as such a hard task. We are just so use to taking for grated just being able to see it and go over and use it.
His other story about trying to explain to her that he could see what she saw made me feel very privileged. To imagine to explain to a 2 year old that I cant see her ball or her bear that she dropped would be so hard. When she was upset she dropped her bear he did not realize that. He became very nervous because at first he thought it was real, then when he realize it was not he could find it making her more upset. It would be very frustrating not to be able to instantly help your own child.
This short podcast made me realize that it is so easy to take a simple task of picking up a toy or getting the phone for granted.
Senses, perception, eyesight, blind
According to the stories of the guy on the radio show it is a very frustrating thing to live with a disability such as being blind, this guy hasn't seen the hotel room he lives in and the only way for him to know the hotel room is to feel it. the night before he felt a lot of the hotel room to find the phone but he didn't know if there was any other place because without sight he can't perceive it to be any bigger. the next morning he heard the phone ring and followed the noise and found another section of the room which he didn't know about before.
If a person is born blind they adapt to the experience but if they become blind during their lifetime it is harder for people to adjust to the feeling and living in that way. The person also wanted to explain to his two year old daughter that he was blind but he didn't know how to explain it to her. He also makes many mistakes like not noticing the ball when the daughter throws it to her or when he hugged another child by mistake. Then when the daughter became 3 years old she sort of started to understand what blindness was.
We should realize how lucky we are to have all our senses, it would be such a struggle to live with something like blindness. I don't think i would not be able to adapt easily to such a thing.
Terms:perceive, blind, Sight, Senses, disability
The guy in the hotel room was trying to find the phone to call his wife. He went feeling around to find where it was. He did this a few times and just never found it. The next morning he heard a phone ring. He was very confused to where it would have been the night before when he was trying to find it. It turns out that the night before while he was feeling his way around the room, there was a part that he hadn’t been to. Because he had felt the bed, he figured he was done. But that wasn’t the case. When you are blind you have to kind of draw a mental picture but because he had never felt that part of the room, he couldn’t add that to his mental picture.
The other story was about the man and his daughter. She didn’t understand that her dad couldn’t see. He did many things that upset her, like hugging another kid and not knowing she had kicked a ball to him. Another time they were walking and she had said ‘bear’. He started running not knowing what to do. When he heard her cry, he went another way. This made her cry too. He didn’t know what to do. He found out that she had actually just dropped her teddy bear. It wasn’t until later that she understood that her dad couldn’t see. She now knows that her dad can’t see the things she can, but her mom can.
I realized that I would get super frustrated with my surroundings if I where blind. In elementary we were learning about the senses and our teacher told us when we get home to try to close our eyes and live a day without sight. At first it was easy because I knew my way around our house but when it came time to eat and other things like that, it was very hard for me. I had to open my eyes because I gained frustration. I know that the blind can’t just open their eyes and it be over, and that frustrated me more. I have a high respect for those who are blind because they go through life not knowing what their surroundings look like, or be able to interact with some people like they would hope. My thought would be that someone who was born blind may not have some of the frustrations of those who where blinded after having sight. If someone was born with it they wouldn’t know any other way, or even know that there is another way. The people who go blind after being able to see have many more frustrations because they don‘t know how to go through life without being able to see. So it’s much harder for them to cope with it.