Can the blind see in dreams?

Question

Can people who are blind at birth see sights in their dreams?

Answer 1

1) Answer from somebody who has been blind since she was fairly young:

" Yes, blind people do dream. What they see in their dreams depends on how much they could ever see. If someone has been totally blind since birth, they only have auditory dreams. If someone such as I, has had a measure of sight, then that person dreams with that measure of sight. I still dream as though I can see, colors included. For people I've met since, their faces are just blurs or how I imagine they look. To me, someone like my mother looks forever 30. "

2) It's kind of weird that I'd find this question right after I asked a blind friend about this. She said that in her dreams she doesn't see anything, but just senses that they are there. She says in her dreams she is more aware than she is in real life but can't see anything. After all, everyone both blind and sighted, dream about things they know and have experienced. We just jumble it up when we dream.

3) My colleagues and I were discussing this yesterday, and as one of them put it, dreams are a combination of several channels of input, sight being just one of them. For those of us gifted with sight, the "visual" channel is pretty dominant, hence the importance to "seeing" dreams.

For those in whom the "visual" channel is not dominant or non-existent (blind from birth), other dominant channels (sound, taste, smell...) will play greater role. So dreaming would be derived from all available input channels.

In this sense, just the term "dreaming", and not "seeing a dream", will be more generic and would mean to "experience".

4) Three careful sleep laboratory studies (Amadeo & Gomez, 1966; Berger, Olley, & Oswald, 1962; Kerr, Foulkes, & Schmidt, 1982) and at least one rigorous study of home dream reports (Hurovitz, Dunn, Domhoff, & Fiss, 1999) have shown that congenitally blind dreamers and those who became blind in infancy do not have visual imagery in their dreams, whereas those blinded in adolescence or young adulthood often retain visual mental imagery in their waking life and in their dreams. These controlled experiments confirm what has been reported in a number of earlier self-report studies reviewed by Kirtley (1975), who concluded on the basis of his extensive appraisal that individuals blinded before the age of about 5 report no visual imagery in dreams as adults, whereas those blinded after about the age of 7 are likely to retain visual imagery in dreaming.

According to Foulkes (1999), these studies have theoretical implications beyond the issue of blindness because they suggest that the mental imagery necessary for dreaming develops between the ages of 4 and 7. This suggestion fits with his finding that preschool children awakened in the sleep laboratory rarely report dreams and that the reports are bland and static on the few occasions on which they do recall dreams (Foulkes, 1982, 1999). Thus, the findings on blind dreamers add to the support for a cognitive theory of dreaming (Antrobus, 1978, 1991; Foulkes, 1985).

Answer 2

Yes, blind people do have dreams. However, those blind since birth or very early childhood have no visual imagery in their dreams. Instead, they experience a very high percentage of taste, smell, and touch sensations in their dreams.

The breakdown is as follows:

There are no visual images in the dreams of those born without any ability to experience visual imagery in waking life.

Individuals who become blind before the age of five seldom experience visual imagery in their dreams.

Those who become sightless between the ages of five and seven may or may not retain some visual imagery.

Most people who lost their vision after age seven continue to experience at least some visual imagery, although its frequency and clarity often fade with time.

For more information, go to google.com, search on "blind people dream" and you'll get links to many sites about the dreams of the blind.

Answer 3

I'm Sure they could, but they may not find out what they are because they are blind, but almost anyone can see in a dream, you can do whatever you want in a dream.

Answer 4

no.  they have no frame of reference at all to visual sights.  a person who goes blind after birth, say 3-5 or older, can see in dreams.

Answer 5

Yes,coz they can hear the incidents n events etc., of routine life...

they too can dream the better things of life.

Answer 6

Perhaps some people do,.....

some people don't,....

interesting question,....

Answer 7

not sure but i don't think so