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An Intimate Journey through the Science of Sound and Language
Dutton Adult
April 2014
On Sale: April 17, 2014
417 pages
ISBN: 0525953795
EAN: 9780525953791
Kindle: B00DMCVZCK
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
An investigation into the science of hearing, child language
acquisition, neuroplasticity, brain development, and Deaf
culture. A mother notices her toddler is not learning to talk the way
his brothers did… Is something wrong? Her search for
answers is a journey into the mysteries of the human brain. Lydia Denworth’s third son, Alex, was nearly two when he was
identified with significant hearing loss that was likely to
get worse. Her sweet boy with the big brown eyes had
probably never heard her lullabies. Denworth knew the importance of enrichment to the developing
brain but had never contemplated the opposite: Deprivation.
How would a child’s brain grow outside the world of sound
most of us take for granted? How would he communicate?
Would he learn to read and write—weren’t phonics a key to
literacy? How long did they have until Alex’s brain changed
irrevocably? In her drive to understand the choices—starting
with the angry debate between supporters of American Sign
Language and the controversial but revolutionary cochlear
implant—Denworth soon found that every decision carried
weighty scientific, social and even political implications.
As she grappled with the complex collisions between the
emerging field of brain plasticity, the possibilities of
modern technology, and the changing culture of the Deaf
community, she gained a new appreciation of the exquisite
relationship between sound, language and learning. It
became clear that Alex’s ears—and indeed everyone’s—were
just the beginning. An acclaimed science journalist as well as a mother,
Denworth interviewed the world’s experts on language
development, inventors of ground-breaking technology, Deaf
leaders, and neuroscientists at the frontiers of research.
She presents insights from studies of everything from
at-risk kids in Head Start to noisy cocktail party
conversation, from songbirds to signal processing, and from
the invention of the telephone to sign language. Weaving together tales from the centuries-long quest to
develop the cochlear implant and simultaneous leaps in
neuroscientific knowledge against a tumultuous backdrop of
identity politics, I Can Hear You Whisper shows how sound
sculpts our children’s brains and the life changing
consequences of that delicate process.
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