Affiliations: Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences,
Center for Visual Sciences & University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Matthew W. G. Dye, now at the Department
of Brain & Cognitive Sciences Speech and Hearing Science, Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 901 S. Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820-0268, USA. Tel.: +1
217 244 2546; Fax: +1 217 244 2235; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The literature on visual attention in deaf individuals presents two
competing views. On one hand, the deficit view proposes that auditory input is
necessary for the development of visual attention; on the other hand, the
compensation view holds that visual attention reorganizes to allow the
individual to compensate for the lack of auditory input. While apparently
contradictory, we suggest that these views shed complementary light on the
cross-modal reorganization of visual attention after early deafness. First,
these two fields of inquiry look at different aspects of attention. The deficit
view is mostly supported by studies of allocation of attention in time, whereas
the compensation view is backed by studies measuring the allocation of
attention across space. Second, they focus on groups of different age and
different background. Deficits have been documented mostly in children with
mixed hearing loss aetiologies, whereas reorganization has been documented in a
less representative, but more homogenous group of Deaf adults. We propose a
more integrative view in which early auditory deprivation does not result in
better or worse visual attention. Rather, selected aspects of visual attention
are modified in various ways along the developmental trajectory as a result of early deafness.
