Röder B, Rösler F, Neville H J
Biological and Experimental Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg (Germany), Gutenbergstrasse 18, D-35032, Marburg, Germany.
Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2001 Apr;11(2):289-303. doi: 10.1016/s0926-6410(01)00002-7.
Blind people must rely more than sighted people on auditory input in order to acquire information about the world. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that blind people have better memory than sighted individuals for auditory verbal material and specifically to determine whether memory encoding and/or retrieval are improved in blind adults. An incidental memory paradigm was employed in which 11 congenitally blind people and 11 matched sighted controls first listened to 80 sentences which ended either with a semantically appropriate or inappropriate word. Immediately following, the recognition phase occurred, in which all sentence terminal words were presented again randomly intermixed with the same number of new words. Participants indicated whether or not they had heard the word in the initial study phase. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 28 electrode positions during both the encoding and the retrieval phase. Blind participants' memory performance was superior to that of sighted controls. In addition, during the recognition phase, previously presented words elicited ERPs with larger positive amplitudes than new words, particularly over the right hemisphere. During the study phase, words that would subsequently be recognized elicited a more pronounced late positive potential than words that were not subsequently recognized. These effects were reliable in the congenitally blind participants but could only be obtained in the subgroup of sighted participants who had the highest memory performance. These results imply that blind people encode auditory verbal material more efficiently than matched sighted controls and that this in turn allows them to recognize these items with a higher probability.
为了获取有关世界的信息，盲人比有视力的人更依赖听觉输入。本研究旨在检验以下假设：盲人对听觉语言材料的记忆比有视力的人更好，具体而言，是要确定盲人成年人的记忆编码和/或检索是否得到改善。采用了一种附带记忆范式，其中11名先天性盲人及11名匹配的有视力的对照者首先听80个句子，这些句子以语义合适或不合适的单词结尾。紧接着进入识别阶段，在此阶段，所有句子的结尾单词再次随机呈现，并与相同数量的新单词混合在一起。参与者指出他们在初始学习阶段是否听过该单词。在编码和检索阶段，从28个电极位置记录事件相关脑电位（ERP）。盲人参与者的记忆表现优于有视力的对照者。此外，在识别阶段，先前呈现的单词比新单词诱发的ERP正波幅更大，尤其是在右半球。在学习阶段，随后会被识别的单词比未被识别的单词诱发更明显的晚期正电位。这些效应在先天性盲人参与者中是可靠的，但仅在记忆表现最佳的有视力参与者子组中才能获得。这些结果表明，盲人比匹配的有视力的对照者更有效地编码听觉语言材料，这反过来又使他们更有可能识别这些项目。
