Interactions of cognitive and auditory abilities in congenitally blind individuals (original) (raw)
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Congenitally blind individuals have been found to show superior performance in perceptual and memory tasks. In the present study, we asked whether superior stimulus encoding could account for performance in memory tasks. We characterized the performance of a group of congenitally blind individuals on a series of auditory, memory and executive cognitive tasks and compared their performance to that of sighted controls matched for age, education and musical training.
Acta Physica Polonica A, 2012
The present work discusses results concerning sound perception obtained in selected auditory tasks, such as pitch discrimination and pitch-timbre categorization for blind and visually impaired subjects (children and teenagers). Listeners were divided into two age groups: 713 year olds and 1418 year olds. The study tested 20 individuals (8 congenitally blind and 12 visually impaired) and 20 sighted persons comprising reference groups. The timing of the experiments was as short as possible due to the fact that our listeners were children. To date, no study has described results of such experiments for blind/visually handicapped children and teenagers. It was shown that the performance of blind/visually impaired participants was not as good as that of blind adults in pitch discrimination and pitch-timbre categorization tasks. These results may have implications for the development of auditory training in orientation and mobility of young visually handicapped people.
1978
A battery of 26 auditory tests was given to groups of 30 blind, partially sighted, and sighted children. Primary factors defined by the tests corresponded closely to those previously found with a similar battery (Stankov & Horn, in press). Overall, the blind and sighted were equal on most of the abilities measured by the tests; however, differences could be observed if particular primaries were considered. Blind children performed better on tests measuring tonal memory but worse on tests of masking and rhythm. The partially sighted group demonstrated poorer performance than the other two groups; this was attributed to possible cognitive and/or personality problems in addition to those associated with reduced vision. Auditory abilities have been studied since the beginnings of experimental psychology, but two papers by Karlin (1941, 1942) can be viewed as landmarks for the approach to be adopted here. In these papers Karlin used the Thurstonian method of factor analysis in order to a...
COGNITIVE BRAIN RESEARCH , 20 (2) p. 328. (2004), 2004
We report on enhanced processing of speech sounds in congenitally and early blind individuals compared with normally seeing individuals. Two different consonant-vowel (CV) syllables were presented via headphones on each presentation. We used a dichotic listening (DL) procedure with pairwise presentations of CV syllables. The typical finding in this paradigm is a right ear advantage, indicating better processing of the CV-syllable stimuli in the left hemisphere. The dichotic listening procedure involved three different conditions, with instructions to pay attention to the right ear stimulus, the left ear stimulus or no specific instruction. The participants were 14 congenitally or early blind Finnish-speaking individuals that were compared with 129 normal seeing Finnish-speaking individuals. The blind participants reported overall significantly more correct syllables than seeing control subjects. When instructed to pay attention to the left ear stimulus and only report from the attended channel, they were again significantly better than the seeing control subjects. These findings indicate effects of hemispheric reorganization in blind individuals at both the sensory and cognitive levels of information processing in the auditory sensory modality.
Cognitive Brain Research, 2004
We report on enhanced processing of speech sounds in congenitally and early blind individuals compared with normally seeing individuals. Two different consonant -vowel (CV) syllables were presented via headphones on each presentation. We used a dichotic listening (DL) procedure with pairwise presentations of CV syllables. The typical finding in this paradigm is a right ear advantage, indicating better processing of the CV-syllable stimuli in the left hemisphere. The dichotic listening procedure involved three different conditions, with instructions to pay attention to the right ear stimulus, the left ear stimulus or no specific instruction. The participants were 14 congenitally or early blind Finnish-speaking individuals that were compared with 129 normal seeing Finnish-speaking individuals. The blind participants reported overall significantly more correct syllables than seeing control subjects. When instructed to pay attention to the left ear stimulus and only report from the attended channel, they were again significantly better than the seeing control subjects. These findings indicate effects of hemispheric reorganization in blind individuals at both the sensory and cognitive levels of information processing in the auditory sensory modality. D
Performance in a Pitch Memory Task by Visually Handicapped Children and Youths
Archives of Acoustics, 2012
The present work discusses results concerning sound perception obtained in a pitch memorization experiment for blind and visually impaired subjects (children and teenagers). Listeners were divided into two age groups: 7-13 year olds and 14-18 year olds. The study tested 20 individuals (8 congenitally blind and 12 visually impaired) and 20 sighted persons comprising reference groups. The duration of the experiments was as short as possible due to the fact that our listeners were children. To date, no study has described results of such experiment for blind/visually handicapped children and teenagers. In the pitch memory experiment blind teenagers outperformed blind children and both age groups of visually impaired subjects in two out of three tested cases. These results may have implications for the development of auditory training in orientation and mobility of young visually handicapped people.
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology-revue Canadienne De Psychologie Experimentale, 2009
Congenital blindness is one of the rare human models to explore the role of experience-driven cross-modal compensation after early sensory deprivation. We re-examined spatial attention abilities in congenitally blind participants and sighted controls using a paradigm comparable to the one of our previous study , except that this time the auditory and tactile stimuli were now presented in sequence. Although both groups performed the task with similar accuracy, we observed that blind participants had shorter reaction times than sighted controls for the detection of spatial targets in both sensory modalities. Moreover, this finding held true for both the selective and divided attention conditions. These results not only confirm previous reports on the superiority of the blind during auditory and tactile attention tasks, but also broaden our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying cross-modal compensation.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
For centuries, anecdotal evidence such as the perfect pitch of the blind piano tuner or blind musician has supported the notion that individuals who have lost their sight early in life have superior hearing abilities compared with sighted people. Recently, auditory psychophysical and functional imaging studies have identified that specific auditory enhancements in the early blind can be linked to activation in extrastriate visual cortex, suggesting crossmodal plasticity. Furthermore, the nature of the sensory reorganization in occipital cortex supports the concept of a task-based functional cartography for the cerebral cortex rather than a sensory-based organization. In total, studies of early-blind individuals provide valuable insights into mechanisms of cortical plasticity and principles of cerebral organization. The blind as a model of cortical plasticity and reorganization Following early sensory deprivation, the brain demonstrates an ability to structurally and functionally reorganize to optimally compensate for the lost modality. This reorganization provokes the enhancement of specific visual abilities in the deaf [1]. Similar to auditory deprivation, the wealth of unused cortical space present in the visually deprived brain affords opportunities for compensatory plasticity (see Glossary) as well as augmented crossmodal plasticity to occur [2-4]. Following vision loss, crossmodal recruitment of auditory functions in visual cortex maintains the proto-organization of the visual system, suggesting that insights gleaned from blind individuals can be extended to other forms of sensory loss and are indicative of general plasticity mechanisms.