What makes it difficult for mute people to speak?
In: 25
Could be a few different reasons. Most common is the person is deaf. If you can’t hear yourself, it can be very difficult to learn how to pronounce words correctly, thus most deaf stick to signing. Other possible reasons may be linked to a neurological disorder which disrupts the brain pathways that need to work together to produce speech or an anxiety disorder which manifests as an overwhelming phobia that keeps the person from speaking.
People who are mute generally fall into three categories –
1) Physical damage or malformation of the speech organs. Something like not having a tongue, or damaged vocal chords. They literally *cannot form speech.*
2) Mental damage or malformation of the brain in the areas required to process or form speech. Anything from a stroke that affects the nerves controlling the mouth/vocal chords to a more severe cognitive disruption that either means the person can’t mentally process language or how to “form” language. Our ability to process and form language develops during childhood and we have unfortunate examples of “feral” children who missed that developmental stage and despite having no physical or mental handicaps at birth, will never “learn” how to communicate or process language.
3) A related disorder such as complete deafness. A person who has a perfectly functioning set of speech organs and a healthy brain for language, yet is born profoundly deaf will never be able to speech “normally” because they can’t hear speech in the first place. As our modern medicine has really improved many hearing disorders this is getting much better thankfully. But long story short, a person with no ears will never speak “normally”.
Language acquisition is primarily driven through input (hearing speech) rather than output (practicing to speak). A lack of quality input due to hearing impairment leads to misarticulating the language.
I’m not mute but I used to get really bad depression bouts that would cause me to be unable to verbalise. It was like there was a wall in my brain blocking my vocal cords/mouth to say the words to answer even just basic questions so I’d just nod or shake my head.
Not a technical ‘ELI5’ but just another example of muteness and reason for it.
I don’t know if this in anyway belongs here as an explanation but as a child I had selective mutism. I was kept back a year in school because I wouldn’t speak. At that time no one knew what selective mutism was, and in 1970’s Ireland where not every mealtime was accompanied by the meal part, no one cared. As I grew up it went away and I was just classified as quite. Fast forward a number of years and I get very sick. A part of the sickness was starvation that brought out front and center, Autism Spectrum Disorder. What helped in the diagnosis was when my wife realized at some point I had just stopped talking and at times all I could do was communicate with my hands. I’m all better now and I’m dealing with the ASD very well.
Latest Answers