A common effect of aging is a degenerated hearing ability, yet the majority of us have no idea what it is like to be hearing impaired. To combat my ignorance, and to complete the assignment, for eight hours I wore disposable ear protection devices that greatly reduced my hearing ability. From the moment the earplugs expanded to the contours of my auditory canals, the world around me was drastically changed. The most immediate and striking effect was the feeling of isolation from my environment. Auditory cues that I normally relied on to orient my position relative to other objects and people were completely blocked out, while noises I was normally unaware of became my dominant auditory stimuli. These changes in my abilities required that I adapt, and change my techniques of gathering external stimuli.

While wearing the earplugs I became aware of several internal sounds; such as the reverberations of my voice in the bones in my head, breathing, and the transmitted sound from the impact of walking. The first of these three was the most pronounced, and the most difficult to deal with. When speaking I was completely unable to hear external sounds. This proved extremely difficult in social situations where I wanted to express my opinion. As I would begin to interject, the echoing sounds would make it impossible to hear if the conversation had stopped to hear what I was going to say (which doesn’t always happen). I found myself spending more time observing conversations, and less time participating in them. Although the earplugs do dampen the average frequencies of human voice by approximately 40db I was able to listen effectively if I concentrated on the speaker, compensating with the aid of visual cues.

Although social situations were difficult to deal with, I found the most unnerving aspect of this sensory deprivation experience to come when I was not interacting with people. The world I perceived was empty and disturbing: people would suddenly appear in my visual field as if the had materialized in the position I had first spotted them, the wind was ineffective in bringing about a chill as I watched the silent leaves run across the ground, and I even began to experience mild auditory illusions. The earplugs seemed to be causing a mild form of auditory Charles Bonnet syndrome, in which a part of the brain that usually receives sensory information is deprived and in responds by creating hallucinations. Also, with only my partial hearing ability the picture of the world that I was able to generate seemed discontinuous and rather incomplete, making me nervous. I didn’t feel like I had adequate information about my environment to relax.

Not all aspects of the partial sensory deprivation were disagreeable. In fact, I enjoyed the pure quiet I experienced while studying. It helped me focus, and the lack of distractions led to greater retention. Thinking of these benefits I noticed several people wearing headphones. This brought about the question "are people inducing a form of sensory deprivation, and if so for what purpose?" The next day I wore headphones as I followed my usual routine of checking my mail and eating lunch. The experience was very different from the experience of the previous day with the earplugs. The isolated feeling was the same, but the empty feeling I had the day before was filled with my favorite music. I still couldn’t hear any low decibel sounds, but the presence of any auditory stimuli made me more comfortable. My conclusion is that headphones provide the desired seclusion without the undesirable emptiness.

My experience with self-induced auditory deprivation has taught me how much I rely on sound to create a complete picture of the external environment. I intend on continuing to use the earplugs while studying, but to rely on headphones when I just want to get away.