Auditory Perception and the Control of Spatially Coordinated Action of Deaf and Hearing Children

Abstract

From birth onwards, auditory stimulation directs and intensifies visual orientation behaviour. In deaf children, by definition, auditory perception cannot take place and cannot, therefore, make a contribution to visual orientation to objects approaching from outside the initial field of view. In experiment 1, a difference in catching ability is demonstrated between deaf and hearing children (10-13 years of age) when the ball approached from the periphery or from outside the field of view. No differences in catching ability between the two groups occurred when the ball approached from within the field of view. A second experiment was conducted in order to determine if differences in catching ability between deaf and hearing children could be attributed to execution of slow orientating movements and/or slow reaction time as a result of the auditory loss. The deaf children showed slower reaction times. No differences were found in movement times between deaf and hearing children. Overall, the findings suggest that a lack of auditory stimulation during development can lead to deficiencies in the coordination of actions such as catching which are both spatially and temporally constrained.

Efficacy and Effectiveness of Cochlear Implants in Deaf Children

“…Several studies have reported that deaf children display atypical performance on visual-motor integration tasks as well as other perceptual-motor tasks involving balance, running, throwing, and figure drawing (Erden, Otman & Tunay, 2004;Savelsbergh, Netelenbos & Whiting, 1991;Wiegersma & Van der Velde, 1983). In fact, more than 50 years ago, Myklebust and Brutten (1953) carried out one of the earliest studies investigating the visual perception skills of deaf children.…”

Is visual perception of hearing-impaired children different from healthy children?

“…Auditory information can facilitate the pick-up of visual information [3]. Auditory stimulus maintains the activation of visual stimuli in the memory [13].…”

“…Various authors reported that audition is important in orienting eye, head, and body in the environment. Infants are capable of directing their eyes and head to auditory targets [1,3,5,6].…”

“…Auditory stimulus plays important role in the direction of visual movements and orientation in the space [1][2][3][4]. Various authors reported that audition is important in orienting eye, head, and body in the environment.…”

Visuomotor integration ability of pre-lingually deaf children predicts audiological outcome with a cochlear implant: a first report

“…It is recognized that perceptual motor development is closely tied to the emergence of spoken language in normal hearing children and children with hearing loss [5][6][7][8][9]. Some studies have suggested that early deafness is associated with atypical development of visuomotor skills such as figure copying/drawing and catching [10,11]. We examined whether visuomotor skills of deaf children were predictive of speech and language outcomes with a CI.…”