Plasticity in Deafness, Memory, and Language

Project Overview
Loss of a sense dramatically alters the type of experience that individuals can rely on as they navigate in their world. We study the impact of early deafness on vision, attention, and cognition. Our work documents an array of rather specific changes following early, profound deafness. For example, lifelong deafness enhances only one aspect of vision: peripheral visual attention. The consequences of that one change range from enhanced visual search abilities to differences in reading patterns. We study how these changes proceed developmentally with an eye toward providing valuable information for deaf education.

We are also interested in characterizing the impact of language type, spoken or signed, on the brain organization for memory and language. We have shown that native users of American Sign Language have a smaller capacity limit of about 5 signs, rather than the classical 7+/-2 items documented in speakers, when testing serial short-term memory. This result cannot be attributed to often cited factors such as greater complexity or time of articulation for signs as compared to spoken words, or to lower cognitive abilities in the deaf. Rather, our work indicates that signers and speakers share that same underlying short-term memory structure, but differentially rely on different codes to support memory. Speakers depend on the phonological loop to a much greater extent than signers, who in turn rely on distributed coding across phonological, semantic, and visuo-spatial processes. Consequences of these different processing biases for reading and its neural bases are currently under investigation.

Related Publications

• For related publications, please visit our Publications page here .