Conversational Delay

I read Jamie Berke's Conversational Delay a Normal Thing? with great interest. She wrote about a (most likely) hearing woman's frustration with her deaf husband who seems to hear what is being said but doesn't respond in a timely manner.

The comments left so far have really helped to clarify what could be happening and why.

It’s definitel a ‘deaf thing’ I am late deafened. I hear sound, but can’t make sense of the speech sounds I hear. It can take me awhile to ‘fill in the blanks’ and because that’s not a conscious thing, my brain sometimes fills them in incorrectly leading to a super off the wall non-sensical sentence. I then have to start over and think. This all happens within a matter of seconds, but the delay can seem long to a hearing person. 

Yeah, SOME deaf people naturally have auditory processing disorder. Even if they hear them, it take a while to process. Which is why some of us habitually say “what” all the time even though we heard them (another reason why we say what all the time because we are never confidence with what we heard)…. I think it is worst if a deaf person was diagnosed late.
 
I do the same thing! I find myself delaying my response often. I understand that it can be annoying or that I am making the other person uncomfortable with me staring at them blankly as I am "filling in the blanks."

This would be an example of my thought process during the delay:

"OK, he was pointing to the TV, he is watching that movie and he said,"It's really good. Should watch it." Now I think he is asking me a question. Geez, we were just talking about the oil spill, and now he is talking about this movie. Aaargh! A brand new topic that has nothing to do with what we were just talking about! OK, concentrate, Elizabeth. He is pointing to the TV showing a movie. He obviously asked a question, so maybe he was asking me if I saw the movie? Oh, you know what? He did ask, "Have you seen it?" I remember now. All right, now I must answer him."

By the time I have answered, ten to twenty seconds have passed. Either the person thought I was not listening or did not hear and is repeating the question or the person is staring at me wondering what is wrong with me.

Also, it seems as if I habitually say "What?" in most conversations. I am always ready or getting ready to say "Eh? What? Huh?"  I never thought about why I do this or was aware that I probably do this often. Is it because of lack of confidence? Do I always expect that I am not going to hear what is being said? Of course. Because I have trouble hearing. I always expect that I will have trouble hearing what is being said. Whenever you have trouble in any area, you are expecting to fail or struggle with it all the times. Sometimes I surprise myself with the fact that I correctly heard or guessed what was said in a noisy restaurant area.

I am going to print out this article and give it to some teachers and parents, just to bring more awareness. Perhaps it will make some of them realize that it is not that we don't listen or care to respond half the times, our brains are working hard at processing the information as we participate in fun guessing games.

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