Cognitive skills and their underlying brain organization are not fixed but can be shaped by the experience of the individual. The extent of such experience-dependent plasticity provides valuable information about the ability of the nervous system to reorganize and adapt. To this aim, we have been studying individuals who are born deaf. The goal of our research is to document the effect of deafness and that of American Sign Language (ASL-the visuo-manual language used by the deaf) on vision and its neural organization. Our working hypothesis is that deafness alters visuo-spatial attention. Building on our previous behavioral and brain imaging work, we will test the hypothesis that deafness leads to enhanced peripheral visual attention, and we will characterize the consequences of this peripheral enhancement for the processing of centrally presented visual information. Attention is a multi-faceted concept and we will be interested in asking which other aspects of visual attention, beyond its spatial distribution, may be modified by early deafness. It may be that cross-modal plasticity proceeds primarily by reshaping the brain systems that typically support multimodal integration. Under this view, we expect little to no changes in other aspects of attention beyond spatial attention for which cross-modal links are well established. In contrast, the alternate view predicts that compensatory plasticity enhances many aspects of the remaining modalities, with deaf individuals possibly displaying enhancement on a wide range of visual and attentional skills. Deaf and hearing adults will be compared first;then, children (7-17 years old) will be included so as to characterize the effects of altered experience on the developmental trajectory of the skill under study. These studies will first contrast deaf signers and hearing non-signers to establish a population difference. Deaf non-signers and hearing signers will then be tested to separately assess the contributions of deafness and ASL use in the changes observed. This is important as deafness and ASL use have been documented to have different effects on visual skills. This work will allow us to document the range of plastic behaviors exhibited by the visual system as well as boundary conditions on this plasticity. In addition, it will provide insights for the development of environments better suited to deaf individuals'needs.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC004418-08
Application #
7672336
Study Section
Cognition and Perception Study Section (CP)
Program Officer
Cooper, Judith
Project Start
2000-04-01
Project End
2012-08-31
Budget Start
2009-09-01
Budget End
2012-08-31
Support Year
8
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$442,772
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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