Do Blind People Understand Body Language, Eye Contact, & Facial Expressions?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2017
- Tommy talks about what he knows about body language, eye contact, and facial expressions.
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MUSIC
“Mechanical Birds” by Unwritten Stories
“Swingin' Jazz Blues” by Nicolai Heidlas (Music by HookSounds - www.hooksounds.com)
“Cold Night” by Unwritten Stories
“Cloud of Silk” by Great Scott
“I’m Alright” by Unwritten Stories
Used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 & 3.0 Unported licenses.
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I absolutely love that his "suprised face" was one of joy. Because he relates to being suprised in only a positive manner in his life.
I gotta say, I think one of the most appealing things about you, Tommy, is that all your facial expressions are so natural. Because your attempts at imitating emotions aren't all that great, but when you really are feeling a certain way it really does show on your face.
ratlover523 agreed!!! he does have many facial expressions that we can read even if he doesn't know he's doing them
ratlover523 s
Tommy trying to do facial expressions was hilarious.
Haha the end was funny ! They all looked the same, I think that's because you didn't use your eyebrows a lot, and that contributes a lot to facial expressions
Exactly, it's all in the eyebrows...
Matthew Adams He probably doesn't use them as much as a sighted person (?)
pieulpe It's probably because he has never actually seen exactly how other people look when they express those emotions.
So that makes it a lot harder for him to imitate facial expressions.
Borate Boromire I believe using your eyebrows is an instinctive way to express you emotions, and that you don't really control or therefore learn by imitating. It's just like smiling or laughing.
It's maybe something personnal to Tommy without relation to his blindness ?
pieulpe It becomes an instinctive way to express yourself only when you actually feel an emotion.
Tommy only has his muscle memory to guide him. He maybe just forgot about his eyebrows or never noticed that they went up when he expressed particular emotions.
you should do a hearing test so we can see how well your hearing is. Like the ones with pitch
They have an app that creates a tone at different decibels he could use. Rhett and Link have done a test with it.
More than interesting--I bet it's very important for a legally blind or blind person to make sure the hearing isn't deteriorating.
Hopefully it doesn’t use decibels, as that would be a very bad idea. I’d probably say it uses Herz as is what is used to test your hearing range of sound
It's funny how much open eyes means to facial expressions. In most cases you can see the whole emotion from just the eyes. Missing that in your expressions made it very clear.
Yes, especially the "surprised" and "shocked" faces, the way most people express that is by opening their eyes wide.
It's also the eyes that tell you if a smile/laugh is real or fake. Only when you're happy for real do you squint your eyes the "right" way as you smile or laugh.
When you're angry you also tense up around the eyes.
Looking at the eyes is really the best way to read others' mood - that and from the the sound of a person's voice.
poker player
so profound and strange in an interesting way, I never even considered the fact that blind people might not make gestures with their hands while speaking because that action mainly comes from visualising the image...which blind people generally can't do. can't believe there are so many things we just never think about
No it doesn't.
This only occurs to people who've never had sight. Most blind people who grew up sighted or even just partially sighted will still use body language, gestures, and facial expressions the exact same way a sighted person would, because they've already learned them by the time they went blind. Some even end up mimicking the act of making eye contact even if they can't see the person's eyes.
Tommy: one very common thing when people "talk with their hands" is just little choppy motions or hand swings that tend to go in time with the most-stressed words. So it's often not nearly as gestural as you might think.
Tim Stellmach yeah, but some people do it in such an expressive way and if you know what they are like, you can often get a rough idea of what they’re talking about from their hand gestures, or at least know what emotion they are conveying.
My daily dose of positivity. Thanks Tommy, and Ben! You looked happy when you were asked to do the surprised look, you must really like surprises. :)
It was really interesting to see you try out expressions :D
CounterNerd nice profile picture
Thank you, Maddy. If you'd like to know where it's from, don't be afraid to ask.
Now I wonder if blind Italians use their hands when they talk...
Would a blind spider spin webs?
ahahah! Sandra, a not blind italian - who lives in Italy, you know the italians-americans are italian-americans, in most part from Sicily, but not italians anymore :-)
Ovviamente sì, fare QUEL GESTO fa parte della cultura italiana, viene insegnato nelle scuole a tutti, anche ai ciechi, ai quali viene spiegato che facendolo possono dire un'intera frase senza parlare
@@somerandom7672 Actually no. They need sight to spin it.
forgedaboudit
Hey Tommy! I've got an interesting question. How do you imagine/perceive transparent, translucent, and reflective things? How about objects that might be all three?
How about holograms ?
JérémY GrecTé YES!
He may know the theory but I highly doubt he would be able to truly understand or imagine it since it has to do with seeing
I would try to explain transparency by imagining filling up 2 containers with water and dropping an sinking object into each container. Then freeze one of the containers
The hard surface of ice is so solid that you can't reach the bottom and grab anything that might be hidden there. In the same way we can't see through a material that isn't transparent. We can't see what's on the other side of it.
However when you let your hand glide through unfrozen water, your hands will be able to easily reach the bottom and identify the object. In the same way we can look at transparent matter and see what's on the other side of it. Light penetrates the transparent surface and reaches our eyes, while it bounces off non-transparent matter before it reaches us.
Reflective surfaces allows us to see ourselves, such as mirrors. Imagine hearing your voice immediately when you speak. Everything you put in front of a mirror is cloned in real time and it allows you to be able to look at yourself. Light behaves differently when it hits different materials. It can pass through (if the object is transparent), sink in and disappear (if the object is opaque and darkly colored), or it can reflect back again (if the object is shiny, light-colored, and reflective).
I hope this helped in any way, I love your channel!
Things can't really be both transparent and translucent, unless you're talking about different parts of an object.
I love how fascinated Tom is with the seeing world. Makes me realize how much I take my senses for granted.
Man, it's amazing how much information you can read from people's eyes. I couldn't read most of your facial expressions with your eyes closed. 'Sad' was the most distinguishable.
Tommy what do you know about colour blindness?
Well, He IS colour blind, isn't He ?
+JérémY GrecTé he's completely blind, color blindness is different that's a sighted person that can't see certain colors.
YangSing1, colourblind squad, where you at?
The point is, Tommy cannot see these colors neither.
Anyway, it was a joke ;)
technically he is colour blind, he can't distinguish any colour from another. d:
Do you understand mirrored images or shadows?
+
The Tommy Edison Experience is in my top three favourite TH-camrs
It would be interesting if you did a small jigsaw puzzle, like 9 pieces or so!
I'd watch that
OH GOD YES!
Close Reach Such a great idea!
sofullofpiss rude
@sofullofpiss
Your angry face was a little sad looking, and your sad was extra sad. Pretty good on all of the expressions in general!
Aaron Moses This makes me realize that sadness is an ingredient to anger, isn't it?
I love how he laughs after every facial expression!!!! That was adorable!
WOW. i had no idea you had no real grasp of facial expressions. thanks for sharing Tommy.
As someone with a twin sister we have a massive understanding of each other to the point we have entire conversations without words and my friends don't understand it
I laughed so hard at the facial expresion XD
I wish we could hear bens voice more during these videos! I like his commentary!
I talk with my hands all the time because back in college during public speaking, they want you to gesture with your hands to make everything more natural.
Also, facial expressions are mostly eyebrows and I noticed tommy didn't know that.
His singing was pretty good.
How strange his expressions were not as expressive as us. We have totally learned them.
mr. edison, i just so happened upon your channel a few days ago and i have to say, i can't get enough. it's your spirit and your generally positive attitude about everything you do that should be influenced across the world. you're a wonderful human being whom we are all lucky to have found and learned from
Eye contact is like a form of telepathy. One day me and my sister heard something at church. She was on one side of the room, and I was on the other side of the room. At the same time we looked at each other and made eye contact and smiled. We shared the exact same thought at the same time and shared it without texting or anything.
I love Tommy's channel because it gives me insight to an entirely different perspective, while making me better aware of my own. He focuses on his other senses out of necessity, but helps me use mine better as well.
Love the Ben cam! These videos are always fun.
Your attempt at facial expressions at the end really hammered home how much we rely on visual mimicry to get our facial expressions right.
I just saw where you're going to be on Tosh.0 next week! That is so awesome, Tommy! Congratulations and let us know about the experience!
Love watching your channel, always interesting to learn about your point of view of things, keep up the great work 😁👍
Also, I don't see TOO awful much in your expressions, but your voice is SOOO expressive. It is one of the most sincere, animated voices I've ever heard. I think you put all your emotion into the way you speak. I showed a clip of one of your videos to my family, and my sister said, "he's so sincere and so sweet!" and I said, "that's what I always say!" Now that you bring up body language, I really think you put a lot of it into your voice. Which works perfectly for the radio- no wonder you did so well in that career!
This is amazing! Tommy, your channel is blowing my mind! So much of this, I had never realized before, and I am loving that you're making me think and understand. And of course, thanks Ben for making the videos! These videos open up a whole new way of 'seeing' the world. Awesome!
The facial expressions were the cutest thing. You can't go one second without smiling and I absolutely love that.
Tommy just brightens up my day
Loving the video's Tommy! Keep up the good work.
I have no idea how this got recommended to me. My biggest fear is losing my vision, so I always tended to, unknowingly, avoid the topic all together. But after watching at least 10 of Tommys videos, he's an incredible inspiration.
I'm curious if having never being able to see, or losing your vision after you have witnessed some things, which would be harder to deal with. But as Tommy states it's part of his everyday life, it was the hand he was delt. His attitude is awesome. And thanks to Ben for helping tommy share this awesome experience.
the singing part is so wonderful!
Tommy, you have a great smile and I see comments about it in every video
This has been my favorite video by far. Loved to see the facial expressions
Tommy, you are a real internet sensation. I love it that you can enjoy life without sight and be so happy. God bless
Oooooh you've made a video on my question !!!! You've made my day, Tommy!!!! :)
This video had me really smiling with the expressions and then the singing. You're just fun to watch.
Wow, this is soo interesting! I never thought about that hand gestures really only make sense when you can actually see! I love your videos, they really make me think and question many things!
Finally! I asked this question 6 months ago! Great video btw, it answered it pretty well.
This was really, really good. I loved it!
The pictures are amazing in this one good job editor!
You are my eyes into another world (tee hee)that I haven't given much thought about prior to experiencing you videos. I find your topics are extremely fascinating and thank you. I also love your sense of humor. A door into another perception has been opened in my world because of you.
So interesting!! I love this channel!!
Tommy!! I love you and think you are such an amazing and hilarious person! Please never stop making videos!
You are such a positive person ! and your videos are really thought-provoking, thank you ;)
You did a great job on those facial expressions.
When I found your channel I instantly subscribed. Your videos provide a very interesting insight into blind people's lives. It's fascinating.
Always interesting to hear the little intricate details of a blind persons life. You Rock Tommy !
I loved your singing at the end omg! I have such a crush on you Tommy!!!!
Excellent video! Loved the guess at expressions. If you could see my face, that was happiness!
That very last song: you're nobody... etc... sounded really very good, you do have a good singing voice Tommy!
Been following for a long time! Keep up the great content tommy!!
I love your attitude and videos !! You're refreshingly funny
Your facial expressions are amazing! Very similar to natural ones ! (love your channel, you always put a smile on my face)
I remember reading somewhere about a study that showed people are better to spot a lie if they get audio only, without the picture, than if they get both. Often body language and facial expression can be used to cover up your true feelings, or to fake feelings, but when we just listen to the voice apparently it's easier to tell if they are honest or not. I've thought about this a lot before, and wondered if blind people are better at reading emotions, detecting lies and understanding other people.
All my experiences of blind people - which I must admit have mostly been through media - I've always thought they seem very emphatic. You too Tommy. I don't know if that's just an accident or not, but it sorta fits the hypothesis that if you just have sound to go by you'll get a different and better understanding of the feelings of others.
I've noticed before there are several blind people reading Tommy's comments, if any blind people out there wants to share their opinion on this I would love to hear it.
Jesus I'd give up most of what I have to give Tommy even the blurriest of vision... such a genuine guy.
Hilarious. Addicted to this channel. I feel so compelled to explain things to Tommy...and have him explain things to me..
The world needs more people like you
You are awesome brother! Just to let you know you had the hand gestures pretty darn good. Had me 😂😂
really interesting to see raw facial expressions from someone who hasn't learned to know what they actually look like. his expressions might even be truer since its more internalized feelings as opposed to showing on the surface. feelings are, after all, more internal. great and interesting video, love your stuff Tommy Edison!
I live for listening to Tommy sing songs :D Bless this man
I loved your surprised facial expression! You are so cute!!! The angry one looked more like a deep pout. But like you, I couldn't help but laugh along-- you are so much fun to watch, Tommy! I've even got my husband--who is 20/20, to watch also. He gets a chuckle out of your vids, comparing your thoughts and ideas to me. You're wunderbar! (That's German for "wonderful!")
this guy is just so smol and precious...
the expressions LITERALLY had me laughin out loud... hands down my favorite you tuber
I always find it very interesting to heard about things that you don't understand. Or experience different than sighted people experience them.
Very interesting topic. Had me smiling all the way through, too.
When you talked about moving your hands while talking, that got me thinking. Maybe stuff like that is a self-awareness thing that you do not have without sight because you can't physically see yourself in the situation. I mean I'd say most people do it because they don't know what to do... so they move their hands so they're not just standing there looking "stupid".
Thank you, Tommy. This helped me to understand the world a little bit from your standpoint. Your points about voice inflection were insightful (pardon the pun).
I was watching you laugh, smile, and furrow your brow as you thought about the range of emotions. It fascinates me that you do these things without having seen them yourself. They must be part of human hard wiring.
Surprised and scared are similar. Happy and confused are similar at least on your face but I get it. Sad is right. But has many other faces. You did well my friend for a nonsighted amazing person.
You DO talk with your hands. It's the same sighted or not. Well done. Not like you need to hear it but I wonder about how I talk with my hands too as sighted. I love your videos and I will always love my blind aunt who inspired me to watch your channel. As always, thanks bro.
Educational & funny as always :D
And thanks for spanish subtitles !!!
I love your videos Tommy :) I always smile when I see a new video in my subscriptions :D
I just love your channel!
In Budapest there is a "sightless" exhibition where seeing can experience being blind for a while, while an actually blind guide tells you about his or her experiences and answers questions. It is really interesting to experience the world through somebody elses eyes (quite literally). I think as a seeing person you often touch things but you never really feel them, so it is a new 'world' to actually feel what an elephant statue or a kitchen feels like. Same thing with sound, we do use sound to navigate or orient ourselves in the wold, and we can hear when someone talks while smiling or get an idea of the shape and furniture of a room if its dark, but after spending some time in the complete darkness of the exhibition I became more aware of sounds in a different way. For instance, they indicated where other people were and what they were up to, it was the only clue to which way they were facing, and I realised that sight works together with sound to determine the trajectory of a bouncing ball. In short, I experienced hearing and feeling as much richer than usually. If I experience that after just 45 minutes, a lifetime must make these rich beyond what I can imagine.
I like these type of videos from you Tommy, when you say you have no idea about how things work. It's fascinating to try and get my head around the world from your perspective, impossible of course but fascinating all the same. I think a lot of people who watch your videos (from the comments) don't get it that you have NEVER seen ANYTHING, therefore there's no way you can ever understand a lot of things, just as they can never seem to get the concept of "blind since birth". When they figure out eye and optic nerve transplants there're going to be queues of people for you! I offer you one of mine even though mine are the same colour as poop, which you WILL understand once you plug it in.
That was a good video. I remember a video not too long ago where you were doing the 3d printer guessing video and at 6:37 you said "it is?" and you could see a surprised look on your face. And right before that you could see a confused look on your face. When i saw that it made me think if that was a natural expression or someone taught you that.
I wish I could be as positive and happy as you are!
Eye contact is almost like holding or shaking hands. It's connecting with people through senses. If you're holding somebody's hand, you can tell how they might be feeling by how tight their hand is, how fidgety they are, etc. If someone is staring intensely at you, it triggers the same emotional response as if someone was squeezing your hand too hard. It's intimidating. Or if someone doesn't make eye contact, and they're always looking somewhere else, it's like trying to shake someone's hand, but their hand is just limp like a dead fish. That's the best way I can describe it. It's part of social curtesy, but can also be a form of emotional connection.
I follow Molly Burke who went fully blind at 14. She uses her hands a lot when she talks. She said partially because she had some sight when she was younger and partly due to O&M and acting classes she took. Until this video, I thought you always seemed a bit stiff in your body when you talked but this gave me that ah ha moment about why you don't use your hands when you talk. Your face is very expressive when you are talking though. Thank you for these videos!
Eyes communicate so much because of how intimate it feels to look into someone's eyes.
You reserve different quantities of eye contact for different people and different contexts, exactly like touching.
You don't touch strangers at all but you do touch people you are close to like friends, family and lovers.
The only exception to this rule would be during conversations where you are expected to maintain a certain degree of eye contact by looking at or near their eyes. This is the one sense, other than touch, that people can obviously notice if and how you are using it. Thus you have to use it in a way that pays attention to them when they are talking. Not looking at a person is equivalent to wearing headphones.
I just reminded myself how I used to gaze at the clear night sky this summer.. I'm sure if you could see it for the first time, you would really cry
Have you ever tried any hallucinogens?
Here's an illustration I thought of that might help you get an idea of how and why people use gestures, Tommy.
Gestures work sort of like musical notes. Some are soft and compliment the conversation, some are sharper and intensify a conversation, and some are broad and could almost carry the conversation on it's own, like some purely musical tunes in our favorite movies do, where you can listen to the music and know exactly what everyone in the scene is feeling or thinking or doing. Some gestures are subtle, but to sighted people they enhance a conversation and add some depth to it, kind of how the bass guitar adds some subtle depth to whatever songs they're used in.
Hey Tommy, I think you should try to do a jigsaw puzzle with around nine pieces or so!
I never realized how complicated facial expressions can be until this video
THOSE EXPRESSIONS WERE PERFECT!
Another video I enjoyed Tommy, quite interesting :) To me you did pretty well with those facial expressions. The last part when Ben said body language songs, I thought Talking Body. So I start singing it, as you start singing it and we sang together! How funny is that?! Great minds think alike :)) I'd say that was the best part! And yes you saved the best for last. Thanks for sharing another awesome video my friend :)
Tommy you just made realize something. When you were speaking about hearing people who are sad, they sniffles. Being someone who gets the sniffles when doing cocaine, can you tell when others are on drugs? You have already done the LSD video but my curiosity is killing me. Thank you in advanced for the reply my dude. My love goes out to you! Your videos are AMAZING!
I wondered how many facial expressions were learned visually and how many were just natural muscle movements. You have answered that.
You did great with the facial expressions. They were pretty close to what a sighted person would expect. It is interesting about how the facial expressions of blind people are similar to sighted people.
It was very cute when he made faces, because he has little idea what they look like.
I never noticed that you didn't use hand gestures until you mentioned it! Now it can't be "unseen"! Haha no pun intended! You teach me so much!!!!!
It's interesting because when he was talking about how he could tell what people's emotions were, he noticed it in their voice and how the shape of their mouth must effect the way their voice sounds. So, when he tried to show what he thought emotions looked like with his face, he only focused on his mouth and completely ignored the eyebrows, which is a really important part.