Early Access to Sign Language Inoculates Deaf Children Against Visual Attention Deficits
Presentation language: American Sign Language
Early profound deafness brings about a cortical reorganization that enhances specific aspects of
visual processing. Studies of adult Deaf native signers have demonstrated that they have
enhanced attention to visual motion across the visual field (Bosworth and Dobkins, 2002), and
enhanced selective attention to the visual periphery (Bavelier et al., 2000; Bottari et al., 2008).
These enhancements appear to be driven by uni-modal and cross-modal changes in cortical
function, with enhanced processing in posterior parietal cortex (Bavelier et al., 2000), the
posterior superior temporal sulcus (Bavelier et al., 2000), and primary (Karns et al., 2012) and
secondary (Finney et al., 2001) auditory areas along the superior temporal gyrus. Behavioral
studies (Dye et al., 2009; Codina et al., 2011) suggest that these enhancements emerge during
early adolescence, although pediatric imaging work has yet to be undertaken. However, these
findings of enhanced visual attention are at odds with the developmental literature, where deaf
children are characterized as displaying poor sustained attention, high impulsivity, and high
distractibility (Horn et al., 2005; Quittner et al., 1994; Smith et al., 1998; Yucel and Derim,
2008). These developmental studies have typically recruited deaf children who use cochlear
implants, and who primarily use spoken language or a combination of speech and sign. In the
study reported here, measures of sustained attention, impulsivity, and distractibility were
administered to 60 hearing children and 37 Deaf children who acquired American Sign
Language as an L1 from Deaf parents (aged 6-13 years). Subjects performed a continuous
performance test (Gordon and Mettleman, 1987) that required selective responses to sequences
of digits, either with or without distractors. The results indicated few differences in sustained
attention as a function of deafness (Figure 1). However, younger deaf children (6-8 years)
showing higher levels of impulsivity and distractibility than their hearing peers (Figure 2). The
data is interpreted in terms of a spatial redistribution of visual attention (Dye and Bavelier, 2010)
that requires executive functions to be harnessed in a goal-directed manner. It is argued that a
role for EF explains the interaction between age and deafness, and the "cognitive inoculation"
provided by early access to natural (sign) language in deaf children. Future studies are proposed
to examine the role of executive functions (inhibitory control, task switching, working memory)
as mediators of performance gains resulting from cross-modal plasticity in Deaf children.
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Figure 1
5"
Sensi&vity*(d')*
4"
3"
2"
Hearing"(computed"d')"
Hearing"(observed"d')"
1"
0"
100"
150"
Age*(in*months)*
Figure 2
200"
1.2#
Hearing#
1.0#
Deaf#
0.8#
0.6#
0.4#
0.2#
6)8#years#
Deaf"(observed"d')"
50"
1.4#
0.0#
Deaf"(computed"d')"
0"
Distractor)Effect)(d')units))
Yucel, E., & Derim, D. (2008). The effect of implantation age on visual attention skills.
International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 72(6), 869-877.
250"
9)13#years#
Age)Group)