Temporal entrainment of visual attention in children: Effects of age and deafness

Abstract

The major documented effect of auditory deprivation on visual processing is enhanced spatial attention, in particular to the visual periphery and to moving stimuli. However, there is a parallel literature that has reported deficits in temporal aspects of visual processing in individuals with profound hearing losses. This study builds upon previous work showing possible deficits in processing of rapid serial visual presentation streams in deaf children [Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience (2010), 28, 181–192]. Deaf native signers of American Sign Language and hearing children and adults were asked to perform a 2-AFC identification task with a visual target embedded in a stream of visual stimuli presented at 6 Hz. Both children and adults displayed attentional awakening, whereby target identification accuracy improved as the number of stimuli preceding the target increased. For deaf children, however, this awakening effect was less pronounced than that observed in hearing children, interpreted as difficulty sustaining entrainment to the stimulus stream. The data provide the first account of attentional awakening in children, showing that it improves across the 6–13 year age range. They also provide additional support to the possibility of domain-general alterations in the processing of temporal information in the absence of auditory input.

Neurocognitive factors in sensory restoration of early deafness: a connectome model

“…6,20 Such access could be compromised by early deafness. 6,21 Application of a connectome model to individuals with sensory impairment suggests that outcomes of hearing loss and subsequent cochlear implantation will extend beyond the direct result of sensory loss—eg, perception of spoken language in the case of hearing. As a result, factors accounting for individual differences and variation in clinical outcomes after cochlear implantation will not be confined to the auditory system itself—they might range from effects at the cellular level to those at the social level and reveal themselves in complex cognitive functions.…”

“…67 Executive functioning consists of multiple components—ie, working memory, controlled attention, self-monitoring, organisation, inhibition, flexibility-shifting, and goal direction. 68 Verbal working memory, 69,70 controlled cognitive fluency, 67,71 re distribution of attentional resources, 21,72,73 and inhibition–concentration are at risk for delays in individuals with early deafness despite cochlear implantation. 66,74,75 Verbal working memory is assessed with neurocognitive methods that require individuals to hold a sequence of familiar verbal stimuli— eg, digits, letters, or words—in immediate memory while simultaneously engaging in another cognitive activity, such as reversing the order of test items or completing a simple mental calculation (appendix).…”

Finding the balance between capture and control: Oculomotor selection in early deaf adults

“…In particular, we ultimately aimed at testing to what extent sign language proficiency exerts an effect on overt visual selection performance in deaf adults that is specifically outside a linguistic context and without the presence of social stimuli, such as face-related stimuli. Recent evidence obtained with deaf children in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task does indeed suggest that the linguistic background of deaf participants may influence their performance on covert visual attention tasks (Dye, 2014; see also Dye & Bavelier, 2010). The linguistic assessment was carried-out in a separate and dedicated experimental session.…”

Can animation compensate for temporal processing difficulties in deaf people?

“…There is also strong evidence that recruitment of the sensory‐deprived auditory cortex underlies enhancement of the remaining sensory modalities (see Alencar, Butler, & Lomber, for a review). However, other results modulate this advantage and show that when temporal areas are involved in visual processing deaf children and adults, even those who have been exposed to natural sign language from birth perform less well (Dye, ). This is in accordance with Conway's hypothesis, which postulates that the absence of sound early in development results in disturbances to the development of general cognitive abilities related to representing temporal or sequential patterns (Conway, Pisoni, Anaya, Karpicke, & Henning, ; Conway, Pisoni, & Kronenberger, ).…”

“…Research has also shown that deaf participants have a visual advantage when stimuli are presented in the visual periphery (Codina et al, ; Megreya & Bindemann, ; Smittenaar, MacSweeney, Sereno, & Schwarzkopf, ). This advantage disappears when temporal components are involved (Dye, ). It can be assumed that sound is inherently a temporal and sequential signal: The coding of time seems to be more accurate for auditory events than for visual events (Glenberg & Jona, ).…”