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Children born deaf are slower to react to objects in their peripheral vision than hearing people, but teens and adults who have been deaf since birth react faster than their hearing peers.
A new study tests how peripheral vision in deaf people develops from childhood to adulthood.
Profoundly deaf children aged 5 to 15 years were tested using a visual field test. Children between 5 and 10 had a slower reaction time to light stimuli in their peripheral vision than hearing children of the same age.
By the age of 11 and 12, however, hearing and deaf children reacted equally and by the age of 13 and 15, the deaf adolescents reacted more quickly than their hearing peers.
The children tested sat with their head positioned in the center of a gray acrylic hemisphere into which 96 LEDs were implanted. The participants then had to watch a central glowing ring in which a camera was hidden to monitor their eye movements.
The LEDs were each briefly illuminated at three different light intensities in random order. The test was designed to be like a computer game called the Star Catcher. If the LED flash occurred above, the child had to ‘catch the star’ by moving the joystick upward, and if it occurred to the left they would have to move the joystick to that position.
As research in this area continues, it will be interesting to identify factors which can help deaf children to make this visual improvement earlier.