Blind people remember language better than sighted people do

Photo of a city crosswalk sign featuring Braille that states, 'Press button for accessible signal.' - Researchers theorize that the area responsible for vision in sighted people may enhance recall or language processing abilities in people who are blind Blind people can remember speech better than sighted people, but a person's ability to see makes no difference in how they remember sound effects, found a new study by Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Irvine. "It's interesting that people who are blind only showed an advantage with verbal memory," said senior author Marina Bedny , an associate professor of psychology and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins whose work regularly compares blind and sighted individuals' brains. "Blind people may use language like a mental tool to remember information." The findings appear in Experimental Brain Research . Purple banana - Researchers conducted two memory tests with 20 blind adults and 22 blindfolded sighted adults. They wondered if blind participants would outperform sighted ones at remembering spoken sounds. First, participants listened to series of letters, followed by a delay.