Visual Attention and Hearing Loss: Past and Current Perspectives

Background: It is reasonable to expect that deaf individuals require the use of vision for purposes other than those needed by hearing persons. For example, without the use of hearing, one would need to scan the environment visually to determine if someone was approaching rather than listening for footsteps or a name being called. Furthermore, these experiential differences could alter the development of neural organization of sensory systems of deaf persons.

Purpose: To review the evidence-based literature in the area of visual attention and deafness with an emphasis on a series of visual attention studies utilizing several paradigms including the Continuous Performance Task, the Letter Cancellation Task, the Flanker Task, and a self-designed task of target identification in the periphery under distracter and nondistracter conditions conducted at Vanderbilt University.

Research Design: Systematic review

Results: Collectively, the Vanderbilt studies pointed to a compensatory role that the visual system plays for deaf individuals. Specifically, the visual system appears to play an important role in directing a deaf individual's attention to the near visual periphery.

Conclusions: Studies of visual attention in deaf individuals have been mixed in their conclusions about whether altered neural organization results in better or worse visual attention abilities by those who are deaf relative to those with normal hearing. The notion of across-the-board deficits or enhancements in the visual function of deaf individuals is not supported by the literature, nor is there support for the idea that fundamental visual sensory abilities such as acuity or light detection differ between deaf and hearing persons.

Key Words

Deafness - neural organization - visual attention