Is visual selective attention in deaf individuals enhanced or deficient? The case of the useful field of view.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Early deafness leads to enhanced attention in the visual periphery. Yet, whether this enhancement confers advantages in everyday life remains unknown, as deaf individuals have been shown to be more distracted by irrelevant information in the periphery than their hearing peers. Here, we show that, in a complex attentional task, a performance advantage results for deaf individuals.

Methodology/principal findings

We employed the Useful Field of View (UFOV) which requires central target identification concurrent with peripheral target localization in the presence of distractors - a divided, selective attention task. First, the comparison of deaf and hearing adults with or without sign language skills establishes that deafness and not sign language use drives UFOV enha

SUBMITTER: Dye MW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2680667 | biostudies-literature | 2009 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature