Jo Atkinson has had a breakthrough article published in the
Schizophrenia Bulletin, finally laying to rest the myths and legends
perpetuated by hearing professionals (like me) about deaf psychotic
patients.

It can be downloaded here (76Kb PDF):
http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/rapidpdf/sbj063?
ijkey=jPUpPjwzB1qeopt&keytype=ref



*you may need to cut and paste the url to access the article



The abstract is as below.


The study of voice-hallucinations in deaf individuals, who exploit
the visuomotor rather than auditory modality for communication,
provides rare insight into the relationship between sensory
experience and how ``voices'' are perceived. Relatively little is
known about the perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations
in congenitally deaf people who use lip-reading or sign language as
their preferred means of communication. The existing literature on
hallucinations in deaf people is reviewed, alongside consideration
of how such phenomena may fit into explanatory subvocal articulation
hypotheses proposed for auditory verbal hallucinations in hearing
people. It is suggested that a failure in subvocal articulation
processes may account for voice-hallucinations in both hearing and
deaf people but that the distinct way in which hallucinations are
experienced may be due to differences in a sensory feedback
component, which is influenced by both auditory deprivation and
language modality. This article highlights how the study of deaf
people may inform wider understanding of auditory verbal
hallucinations and subvocal processes generally.









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