Hearing-impaired people have better visual processing ability: UoH study
The findings of the study have implications not only for understanding the deaf visual system better but also for deaf education and rehabilitation.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 25 Jan 2022 2:09 PM IST
Hyderabad: In a study on visual attention of hearing-impaired persons by the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Hyderabad (UoH), it was found that people with hearing impairment had better attention to visual cues when compared to normal people.
The paper titled 'Attention capture by brief abrupt-onset cues in hearing-impaired individuals' by Prof. Ramesh Mishra's lab at Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences in School of Medical Sciences at the University of Hyderabad has been published by the prestigious journal 'Neuropsychologia' which is an interdisciplinary journal for cognitive neurosciences.
Deafness-induced neuro-plasticity in the brain along with the use of sign language is considered to be the underlying reasons behind such visual processing differences observed in the deaf. The findings of the study have implications not only for understanding the deaf visual system better but also for deaf education and rehabilitation.
The study was conducted by former Ph.D. student Seema Prasad under Prof. Mishra's supervision. Seema is currently a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at TU Dresden, Germany. The paper is also co-authored by former intern Vidya Somashekarappa who is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
The study was also made possible with the support of Dr. Gouri Shanker Patil who specialises in speech pathology at the National Institute of Hearing-Handicapped and has been a longtime collaborator of Prof. Mishra's lab in deaf studies.
