Recognition of altered shapes by hearing and hearing-impaired subjects.

In the present study, we explored whether mental transformation or feature detection is involved in visual processing of shape recognition; another purpose was to compare the visual processing of hearing subjects with that of hearing-impaired subjects. Deprivation of hearing, according to Myklebust (1964), impedes perceptual functioning in some respects and enhances such functioning in other respects. An experiment was conducted using two-dimensional random shapes under similarity transformations in Euclidean space. Reaction time served as the behavioral measure. The analysis of variance results showed significant main effects of orientations, isometries, and shapes, but not of groups and sizes. There were significant linear trends for orientations and sizes. Both groups demonstrated mental isometric transformation.