Stevens Alexander A, Weaver Kurt
Department of Psychiatry, Oregon Health and Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239-3098, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2005;43(13):1901-10. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.03.007.
Early-onset blindness (EB) produces measurable advantages in auditory perception, attention, memory and language. Neville and Bavelier [Neville, H. J., & Bavelier, D. (2001) Variability of developmental plasticity. In J. L. McClelland, R. S. Siegler (Eds.) Mechanisms of cognitive development: Behavioral andellon symposia on cognition (pp. 271-301)] hypothesized that faster temporal processing underlies many auditory compensatory effects in the blind. We tested this hypothesis by comparing early-onset blind individuals and sighted counterparts (SC) by assessing their rates of perceptual consolidation, the accurate perceptual representation of auditory stimuli. Firstly, we first tested both groups on a temporal-order judgment task (TOJ). EB subjects had significantly lower TOJ thresholds than the SC subjects. Secondly, we assessed perceptual consolidation speed using auditory backward masking tasks, taking into account individual TOJ thresholds. Discrimination performance was unaffected at all mask delays in the EB group while the SC subjects needed a mask delay of 160 ms to perform comparably. A backward masking task using single tone stimuli found no differences between the EB and SC groups any mask delay. A simultaneous masking task demonstrated that the mask effectively impaired discrimination in EB subjects at sensory stages. These results suggest that advantages in perceptual consolidation may reflect a mechanism responsible for the short response times and better performance reported in early blind individuals across a number of complex auditory tasks.
早发性失明（EB）在听觉感知、注意力、记忆力和语言方面产生了可测量的优势。内维尔和巴维利尔[内维尔，H. J.，& 巴维利尔，D.（2001年）发育可塑性的变异性。载于J. L. 麦克莱兰、R. S. 西格勒（编）《认知发展机制：行为与认知研讨会论文集》（第271 - 301页）]推测，更快的时间处理是盲人许多听觉补偿效应的基础。我们通过比较早发性失明个体和视力正常的对照者（SC），评估他们的感知巩固率，即听觉刺激的准确感知表征，来检验这一假设。首先，我们在时间顺序判断任务（TOJ）中对两组进行测试。EB受试者的TOJ阈值显著低于SC受试者。其次，我们使用听觉后向掩蔽任务评估感知巩固速度，同时考虑个体的TOJ阈值。在所有掩蔽延迟条件下，EB组的辨别性能均未受影响，而SC受试者需要160毫秒的掩蔽延迟才能达到类似表现。使用单音刺激的后向掩蔽任务发现在任何掩蔽延迟条件下，EB组和SC组之间均无差异。一项同时掩蔽任务表明，该掩蔽在感觉阶段有效地损害了EB受试者的辨别能力。这些结果表明，感知巩固方面的优势可能反映了一种机制，该机制导致早发性失明个体在许多复杂听觉任务中反应时间短且表现更好。
