Well, I'm visually impaired and hearing is my number one tool. I can see pretty well, but get migraines anytime I use my eyes. My vision consists of shapes, colors, and blurs. While I can see, I've relied on my hearing more than anything. Hearing for us is how many get by in daily life. If we don't register what we hear fast then we're kinda screwed. In school I get out of a lot of reading and use a lot of audio books. Comprehending sound comes with practice but when that's your only option you pick it up quick.

I'm wondering if they didn't do a proper control group.

I'm not blind but I've been using screen readers for years as a software engineer working on accessibility. I can listen to extremely fast rates of speech too.

Maybe it's not magical super hearing that you get when you're blind but just...practice?

This is a very interesting topic to me. I did not lose my vision until my mid to late teens, and I continue to have useful remaining vision. My sense of hearing and auditory processing is not “super.” It is below average.

I also listen to text to speech at probably around the upper end that most blind people listen to, and I have since shortly after I lost my sight and started using TTS.

I don't know what the conversions are, but for examples I typically listen to Alex on iOS at 100% (which is not fast,) Acapella Peter in Voice Dream Reader set to “700wpm” (I really wish it could go much faster, and that there were shorter pauses,) ETI-eloquence Reed on Android at 90-95%, espeak-ng max in NVDA at 50-55% with rate boost checked (100% without rate boost is slow to my perception, although I don't know if rate boost just means it goes to "150%" in that case or if the scaling is completely different. I feel like I listen slower with espeak, but I don’t know if that’s true.) I use exclusively male voices, and typically set the pitch slightly lower than default.

Is it at least in part some mix of natural ability and practice, and it just so happens that sighted people listen to fast speech far less than blind people do from lack of incentive? My sighted husband couldn't understand the clips, and can't understand my TTS at full speed although he picks up words here and there, but he can understand my Voice Dream voice with effort if I dial it down to 500 or comfortably at 400, which seems above-average. I'm inclined to believe that this is just from a lot of exposure.

The article says:

> "That hyperactive radio announcer spewing fine print at the end of a commercial jabbers at 10 syllables per second, the absolute limit of comprehension for sighted people. Blind people, however, can comprehend speech sped up to 25 syllables per second."

The ["24 syllables per second"]
(https://rdouglasfields.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/24sps.wav) clip from the source blog is very understandable to me. Understandable enough that I wonder if they had a big enough sample of blind people (or the right conditions.) The author says in the comments:

> “ no sighted person is known who can attain the listening speeds of these individuals who are using their visual cortex for auditory processing.”

This just leaves me even more curious. I wonder what you would see if you put me in an fmri today, or when I first started losing my sight. “Blindness changing your brain is the only way people develop this ability” seems so reductionist when I think about all the possible reasons why I have it (despite continuing to receive substantial visual input,) and why others don’t. I’m interested to hear what other people’s experiences on this topic are as well.