title: Finding the balance between capture and control: Oculomotor selection in early deaf adults.
abstract: Previous work investigating the consequence of bilateral deafness on attentional selection suggests that experience-dependent changes in this population may result in increased automatic processing of stimulus-driven visual information (e.g., saliency). However, adaptive behavior also requires observers to prioritize goal-driven information relevant to the task at hand. In order to investigate whether auditory deprivation alters the balance between these two components of attentional selection, we assessed the time-course of overt visual selection in deaf adults. Twenty early-deaf adults and twenty hearing controls performed an oculomotor additional singleton paradigm. Participants made a speeded eye-movement to a unique orientation target, embedded among homogenous non-targets and one additional unique orientation distractor that was more, equally or less salient than the target. Saliency was manipulated through color. For deaf participants proficiency in sign language was assessed. Overall, results showed that fast initiated saccades were saliency-driven, whereas later initiated saccades were goal-driven. However, deaf participants were overall slower than hearing controls at initiating saccades and also less captured by task-irrelevant salient distractors. The delayed oculomotor behavior of deaf adults was not explained by any of the linguistic measures acquired. Importantly, a multinomial model applied to the data revealed a comparable evolution over time of the underlying saliency- and goal-driven processes between the two groups, confirming the crucial role of saccadic latencies in determining the outcome of visual selection performance. The present findings indicate that prioritization of saliency-driven information is not an unavoidable phenomenon in deafness. Possible neural correlates of the documented behavioral effect are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Italy. Electronic address: Benedetta.Heimler@mail.huji.ac.il.
authors.forename: Benedetta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Heimler
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Italy.
authors.forename: Wieske
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: van Zoest
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Baruffaldi
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Mieke
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Donk
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council (ISTC-CNR), Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Pasquale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rinaldi
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council (ISTC-CNR), Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria Cristina
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Caselli
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Italy; Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pavani
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003638:Deafness / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Early-deafness; Goal-driven; Oculomotor capture; Overt visual selection; Plasticity; Stimulus-driven