Talk:Human echolocation

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Playing videogames? Pressure? HOAX?[edit]

This sounds as a hoax... Non-blind people (me included) can walk around objects and gain some insight of their pressence, I've done that just for the thrill of trying to use my skills instead of sight to walk around, its hard to keep the eyes closed but what gave away the presence or absence of objects around me, even more so that sound, was the change in light intensity moving through my lids, people who can see and have read this article will probably attribute this minor form of sight (reduced to detecting light's intensity) as echolocation manifested in pressure, because instinctively one's body reacts to this stimulus with something akin to fear that invents the idea of pressure, as we connect the concept of unexplained pressure to what is supernatural and what is supernatural to risks we cannot fully grasp, such as whatever causes the shadow on one's closed lids... however, this is not all...

NOT EVEN THE BEST ECHOLOCATION CAN MAKE SENSE OF DUODIMENSIONAL FIGURES OR COLOURS, THAT IS YOU CANNOT MAKE SENSE OF PAINTINGS OR IMAGES ON A TELEVISION SCREEN WITH ECHOLOCATION, EVEN LESS PLAY VIDEOGAMES!!!!---GTB 22:38 11/10/2006

The kid who plays videogames said that he listens to the sounds of the game to figure out what is going on. --Burbster 11:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you take a look at the video, you can tell that he is echolocating the person's hands and controller, but I may be wrong. He could definitely use the sound to figure out what's going on. Anyway, I think this is pretty cool. It's not a hoax, he doesn't have eyes (the ones he has are glass). --CanesOL79 17:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I personally think it's a hoax, it would be impossible to echo locate peoples fingers on the pad considering it shows him playing a DS on his own. I think more references should be up. Wolfmankurd (talk) 22:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There was a video of a blind guy playing Starcraft against a blindfolder pro... and it most certainly wasn't fake as the other guy had to take of the blindfold to not get beaten, if it was BS there'd be no need for that. Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AR_ZMlPoVs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.226.105.89 (talk) 10:17, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That starcraft game (versus progamer Lim Yo Hwan "SlayerS_`BoxeR`") was played by a guy using the sounds from the game to orientate himself. The rules were that also boxer had to play blind for a certain time, and the game was quite close. Point is that I can see how someone can learn to play a computer game well enough using only the sounds to beat an unexperienced player. This journalist probably hadn't played the game a lot, and was perfectly fine with losing against the blind player to better his article. Echolocation for videogames sounds highly unrealistic to me, and it is certainly not needed. 83.233.11.120 (talk) 18:34, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]


I believe it's a hoax too. The videogame thing is just stupid. It has nothing to do with echolocation. He would be relying on the game giving precise audio feedback. No game does that. Mabye a human could do some rudimentary echolocating. But nothing so advanced. Out ears and our brains are not designed to do this, like those of bats or dolphins are. It would take a couple of thousand years of Evolution to do this. -- Tim —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.184.143.157 (talk) 03:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the video game bit because while this article claims he played by echolocation that claim is not supported by the attached citations. One simply says he played video games, and the other says he listens to the sounds they make -- this is *not* echolocation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.236.156.220 (talk) 04:13, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to re-remove the video game bit, since everyone already agrees on it and the sources say he listens to the sounds of the video games, not that he uses echo location to play them.Rhollis7 (talk) 01:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Whether he is using echolocation or listening to the sounds to play video games is irrelevant; the problem remains that he should not be able to do so **at all** without being able to see. The sounds that video games make might approximate some degree of spacial awareness for the sake of immersion, but, as already mentioned, are nowhere close to being precise enough that the games could be played based on auditory cues alone. Additionally, in the youtube clip of him playing, the sound seems to be coming entirely from the television since there are no other speakers seen in the room. Even if the game DID have the ability to accurately replicate three dimensional sounds, the speaker setup is limited to left/right directionality at very best. Furthermore, the fact that he's playing facing AWAY from the television screen means that, unless he ALWAYS plays facing away from the TV, all of the directional cues coming from the game would be reversed (everything coming from the right speaker he would hear on his left, and vice versa). For a seeing person, this would be as difficult as trying to play a game while looking only at the reflection of the television screen in a mirror. So recap:

1. Game not designed to replicate a perfect three-dimensional soundscape.

2. Television speaker setup physically unable to convey sound in three dimensions.

3. Player physically positioned in such a way that reverses left/right directional cues.

Here's the youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXh-X1iveU

(I did not get a chance to watch the starcraft clip because it has been removed, although that seems highly suspect as well)142.157.214.34 (talk) 02:20, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hearing[edit]

Something of interest to note, though I'm hardly a good enough writer to work it in, is that humans are usually held to have poor stereoscopic hearing (ears on the sides of our heads, after all.. comparable to animals' eye-placement) and that this is why ventriloquism works. It causes one to wonder how humans could ever echolocate properly.

  • There is a recent article on New Scientist website which details some research into hearing and vision. See: How the brain can hear shapes ... this may well be a partial explanation into human echolocation. Magicalpath 03:00, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge[edit]

I placed a merge request to replace the redirect. Please don't redirect if they are different topics. I don't really feel they should merge but they shouldn't be redirected either.--Jondel 00:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

tree pressure[edit]

i've walked around in public places with my eyes closed (i want to be an echolocator). while doing that i have walked past tall skinny things such as (stobey) poles and trees and felt a sensation that was mapped onto my face which i think is the "pressure" that is referred to in the article.

i listened at the same time and noticed that the pressure sensation came with a drop in ambient noise in the direction of the tall skinny thing. i picture it as the pressure is me feeling the shadow of the pole-like structure (think of the ambient noise being light).

i certainly do not believe the effect is from mental processing of the echo of footsteps. i feel the effect when i cannot hear an echo (i know this is not a disproof), even when i walk past something made of foam or leaves (like a bush) that would absorb the incident sound on it.

of course this is all original research so i don't think i can include it. but i think i'll remove that "The cause of this would be the echo of..." sentence because i strongly disagree with it and it's a purely speculative sentence anyway. inlogger 20:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is OR. You might have started with that statement. :) Kortoso (talk) 10:55, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Daniel Kish contribution[edit]

I've searched for info on Daniel Kish's contribution to this topic, and all I find are a few mentions that he is blind and taught himself to echolocate, and reference to hiw own web site and his unpublished master's thesis. Not to belittle what he has done, but these don't really qualify as verifiable sources. And the field was pretty well along without him. The article feels like it has been written by a friend of his. I suggest removing him, unless someone can point out a verifiable source. Dicklyon 22:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some refs I found at [1] and [2]: 

Kish, C. D. (1995). Evaluation of an echo-mobility program 
for young blind people. Unpublished master’s
thesis, California State University, San Bernadino.
  [132] D. Kish, “Echolation: How Humans Can ‘See’ without Sight,” 
at http://worldaccessfortheblind.org/thesis.txt; 
revised version of unpublished M.S. thesis
“Evaluation of an Echo-Mobility Training Program for
Young Blind Persons,” California State University, San
Bernardino, CA (1995).
  [133] D. Kish and H. Bleier, “Echolocation: What 
 It Is and How It Can Be Taught and Learned,” 
at http://worldaccessfortheblind.org/echolocation.rtf; 
presented to California Association for Orientation and Mobility
Specialists (2000).

Ray Charles[edit]

The reason given for deleating the information about Ray Charles doesn't make any sense +[citation needed]» He didn't teach Ray Charles

The information came from the film Ray and the reference states that so there is your citation never claimed it was tought to him by anyone.

It's been fixed. Dicklyon 20:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How is a movie based on the life of the very real Ray Charles considered "fiction"? Are you suggesting that the producers made this fact up about Mr. Charles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.255.62.44 (talk) 10:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying that Ray was a documentary? I don't think it was. If we have a statement about Ray's hearing from a non-fiction source, we can use that, of course. Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vision and Hearing refs[edit]

A sources tag has been added to this section. Most of the content is pretty general, and is supported by the works already cited. If there are specific sentences that you feel need a verifiable source, please add fact tags after them. Otherwise, I'm not sure what is worth looking for. I'll take out the sources tag for now. Dicklyon 20:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge from facial vision[edit]

  • Obviously. I'll just do it. Dicklyon 04:28, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Learned skill or ineffiable talent?[edit]

While this phenomenon is acknowledged as a reality, what is not clear is whether or not human echolocation is a teachable skill- as the bit about Daniel Kish teaching the art of echolocation would seem to indicate- or some ineffiable, unteachable talent based on some freak confluence of excellent hearing and a brain well-suited to the task of echolocation- as the huge number of blind people throughout history and the extremely small proportion of them that appear to have learned to echolocate would seem to indicate. If human echolocation is an acknowledged phenomenon and it is teachable even to some small degree, why isn't its teaching part of standard therapy for the blind? -Toptomcat 03:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The documentary Extraordinary People has a segment on Ben Underwood, one of the blinded person mentioned in this article. He self-taught this skill. During the documentary he met Daniel Kish, another person mentioned in this article. Daniel Kish has a program teaching other blinded people echolocation. Given the amount of people who self-taught this skill is so low, I doubt it will get big anytime soon. I do hope the government will step in and fund more research so that this skill can be propagated. --Voidvector 08:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It'll be good if someone designed an ultrasound sonar that postprocessed the returning sounds to make them audible and not destroy too much of the phase and other information. I think that would be helpful for the blind. While our voices and ears aren't going to do ultrasound anytime soon, our brains can probably learn to do 3D sonar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.48.230.99 (talk) 17:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Larry Scadden[edit]

How should I cite the University of Maryland interview? There were only about a dozen of us involved. Personal communication? We had been puzzling over Wiederorientierung for years, and Larry told us that he found facial vision quite effortful. I'm currently studying these issues in my lab at the University of Sunderland. I did learn from Larry that I could do it, and I use facial vision from time to time when it is useful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Harry.Erwin (talk • contribs) 08:09, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In fiction[edit]

In the Gregor the Overlander series, the titular character acquires this talent. Is it worth making a section for this? Are there any other references in fiction?

Yes, in the 1961 Daniel F. Galouye novel Dark Universe (novel), he posits a civilization living in caves in total darkness. People use "click stones", to "see" by echo location. Romping Cloud (talk) 19:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are many that should be added. Mostly the blind superhuman type some recent popular examples being: Daredevil and Rogue One's Chirrut. Perhaps a separate article even. Houdinipeter (talk) 19:59, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tom De Witte - What?[edit]

Article says he can recognize color. This is impossible- color is a consequence of different wavelengths of light being reflected from materials. It is an electromagnetic phenomenon whereas hearing has to do with air pressure. It may be that due to very poor vision he is considered legally or technically blind but can see to a very slight extent, I've met a person like that. (She couldn't see farther than 15 cm *with* her 1 cm thick glasses on.) Anyway, you cannot see color by echolocation, this should be made clearer.--Ar-Pharazôn (talk) 23:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Horizon on Kish[edit]

The latest Horizon (BBC TV series) on Monday 18 October 2010 covered Kish and his echolocation. It starts around 50 minutes in this BBC iPlayer video link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vhw1d/Horizon_20102011_Is_Seeing_Believing/ -84user (talk) 02:05, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In China?[edit]

Blind people in China tap wooden blocks together as they walk down the street. The way to tell a blind person in China is not by a white cane, but by the sound of the blocks tapping together. I know this from many visits to China. This, surely, is echolocation practised on a large scale. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.180.153.144 (talk) 04:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can you find more about this? Kortoso (talk) 22:44, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Human Language: Xhosa[edit]

I've seen a report on "human batman" - and I tested the clicking sound that where used. Indeed, this works quite well to get an idea of the ambience around.

I wonder if there is a connection to the clicking sound in Xosa language. Can anybody prove if this people lived or hunted in dark environment, possibly?

Just a thought. RalfG — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.176.232.135 (talk) 18:22, 11 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Neuroplasticity Addition[edit]

I added a sentence that mentioned neuroplasticity as a driving mechanism of brain region remapping in human echolocation. I felt it was a very important term to mention in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheetah6666 (talk • contribs) 15:05, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Used by hearing people too?[edit]

Hearing people in anechoic chambers feel disoriented and lose their balance somewhat because we partially use reflections from walls for orientation

He said: ‘How you orient yourself is through sounds you hear when you walk. In the anechnoic chamber, you don't have any cues. You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre. If you're in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair.'

The guy who showed me the room said that, even though he works in there a lot, he still has moments when he loses his balance, because the ear uses sound reflections—in addition to inner-ear leveling—to position the head and body.

— Omegatron (talk) 15:42, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ben Underwood[edit]

Right now, incoming links from disambig and other pages referring to "Ben Underwood" lead here, but other than one external link and an image caption, this article does not mention Ben Underwood. Anyone know why? gnfnrf (talk) 04:09, 21 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There used to be a section about Ben Underwood, but on November 27th, someone removed it without explanation. I've gone ahead and reverted it. Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii (talk) 06:26, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ben passed away recently from cancer. RIP. Kortoso (talk) 10:57, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fictional characters[edit]

Should characters like Juan Ruiz and Matthew Murdock (Daredevil) be included as "notable individuals"? 69.141.211.87 (talk) 01:10, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No. Kortoso (talk) 22:46, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Having one from Avatar the Last Airbender would point to adding Daredevil at least. See my comment above. Houdinipeter (talk) 20:02, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Gender[edit]

Why are all the notable individuals male? If there are no known self-learned women, then surely, Kish has trained some. Artheartsoul1 (talk) 07:51, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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"Neural substrates"?[edit]

In the section Neural substrates of echolocation in the blind, is the term "Neural substrate" something that appears in any of the literature? I can't seem to find it anywhere. Curious about that. Kortoso (talk) 11:00, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is a phrase used in related fields to describe the set of neurons or brain areas causing a particular phenomenon, like:
Fox, Dylan M.; Goodale, Melvyn A.; Bourne, James A. (April 2020). "The Age-Dependent Neural Substrates of Blindsight". Trends in Neurosciences. 43 (4): 242–252. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2020.01.007.
However, it is sufficient arcane that perhaps more natural English use would be better; perhaps Brain areas associated with echolocation. I'll see whether page viewers are happy with that. Klbrain (talk) 05:15, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge with Lucas Murray[edit]

Several of the references on this article are not WP:RS, and I think the level of detail given is not appropriate for a child / young person who is only notable for this one thing. Tacyarg (talk) 17:24, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  checkY Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 14:40, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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