The goal of this research is to assess and separate the effect of deafness and of acquisition of a sign language on the organization of the visual system. Visual abilities in hearing individuals will be compared with those of deaf signers. To separately document the role of deafness from that of signing, deaf with minimal exposure to sign and hearing individuals who are native signers will also be included. Indeed, the existing literature indicates that deafness and acquisition of American Sign Language have different and separate effects on the reorganization of visual functions. The aspects of the visual system that have been modified will be first determined by comparing behavioral indices of visual processes in these four populations. Modifications in brain organization that accompany these behavioral differences will be then characterized with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The existing literature indicates that congenital auditory deprivation is associated with specific enhancement of behavioral performance and neural activity in response to moving stimuli and visual stimuli in the periphery. Since this type of information is predominantly represented along the dorsal visual pathway, it has been proposed that early deafness affects predominantly the dorsal visual pathway. This work will test the hypothesis that dorsal visual functions are altered after early deafness, by studying and comparing motion processing and spatial localization in deaf and hearing. The contribution of deafness and signing will be separately assessed by looking at deaf with minimal signing experience and hearing who are native signers. The second goal of this work is to test whether plastic changes are indeed specific to the dorsal pathway as has been hypothesized in the literature or if plastic changes can be induced by early dearness or signing in the other main visual pathway, i.e. the ventral pathway. For that purpose, face processing and handshape processing will be compared in deaf and hearing as a function of their signing ability. These experiments will provide new information about which sub-systems within vision are most altered by early auditory deprivation and/or early acquisition of signs, and will help to characterize how these changes are implemented at the cortical level. Since these studies will determine the aspects of visual perception that are most likely to reorganize when the environment is altered early on, these results will also carry implications for the kind of training that would optimize visual and attentional skills in children.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC004418-03
Application #
6628401
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-IFCN-8 (01))
Program Officer
Cooper, Judith
Project Start
2001-02-01
Project End
2006-01-31
Budget Start
2003-02-01
Budget End
2004-01-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2003
Total Cost
$319,000
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Rochester
Department
Other Basic Sciences
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
041294109
City
Rochester
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
14627
Dye, Matthew W G (2016) Foveal Processing Under Concurrent Peripheral Load in Profoundly Deaf Adults. J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ 21:122-8
Newman, Aaron J; Supalla, Ted; Fernandez, Nina et al. (2015) Neural systems supporting linguistic structure, linguistic experience, and symbolic communication in sign language and gesture. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 112:11684-9
Dye, Matthew W G (2014) Temporal entrainment of visual attention in children: effects of age and deafness. Vision Res 105:29-36
Dye, Matthew W G; Hauser, Peter C (2014) Sustained attention, selective attention and cognitive control in deaf and hearing children. Hear Res 309:94-102
Hirshorn, Elizabeth A; Fernandez, Nina M; Bavelier, Daphne (2012) Routes to short-term memory indexing: lessons from deaf native users of American Sign Language. Cogn Neuropsychol 29:85-103
Stevens, Courtney; Bavelier, Daphne (2012) The role of selective attention on academic foundations: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2 Suppl 1:S30-48
Hall, Matthew L; Bavelier, Daphne (2011) Short-term memory stages in sign vs. speech: the source of the serial span discrepancy. Cognition 120:54-66
Vannest, Jennifer; Newport, Elissa L; Newman, Aaron J et al. (2011) Interplay between morphology and frequency in lexical access: the case of the base frequency effect. Brain Res 1373:144-59
Newman, Aaron J; Supalla, Ted; Hauser, Peter et al. (2010) Dissociating neural subsystems for grammar by contrasting word order and inflection. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:7539-44
Dye, Matthew W G; Bavelier, Daphne (2010) Attentional enhancements and deficits in deaf populations: an integrative review. Restor Neurol Neurosci 28:181-92

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