Cappagli Giulia, Finocchietti Sara, Cocchi Elena, Gori Monica
Unit for Visually Impaired People, Istituto Italiano di TecnologiaGenova, Italy.
Istituto David Chiossone per Ciechi ed IpovedentiGenova, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2017 Apr 10;8:467. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00467. eCollection 2017.
The specific role of early visual deprivation on spatial hearing is still unclear, mainly due to the difficulty of comparing similar spatial skills at different ages and to the difficulty in recruiting young blind children from birth. In this study, the effects of early visual deprivation on the development of auditory spatial localization have been assessed in a group of seven 3-5 years old children with congenital blindness ( = 2; light perception or no perception of light) or low vision ( = 5; visual acuity range 1.1-1.7 LogMAR), with the main aim to understand if visual experience is fundamental to the development of specific spatial skills. Our study led to three main findings: firstly, totally blind children performed overall more poorly compared sighted and low vision children in all the spatial tasks performed; secondly, low vision children performed equally or better than sighted children in the same auditory spatial tasks; thirdly, higher residual levels of visual acuity are positively correlated with better spatial performance in the dynamic condition of the auditory localization task indicating that the more residual vision the better spatial performance. These results suggest that early visual experience has an important role in the development of spatial cognition, even when the visual input during the critical period of visual calibration is partially degraded like in the case of low vision children. Overall these results shed light on the importance of early assessment of spatial impairments in visually impaired children and early intervention to prevent the risk of isolation and social exclusion.
早期视觉剥夺对空间听觉的具体作用仍不明确，主要是因为难以比较不同年龄段相似的空间技能，以及难以招募从出生就失明的幼儿。在本研究中，对一组七名3至5岁的先天性失明儿童（n = 2；有光感或无光感）或低视力儿童（n = 5；视力范围为1.1 - 1.7 LogMAR）评估了早期视觉剥夺对听觉空间定位发展的影响，主要目的是了解视觉体验对于特定空间技能的发展是否至关重要。我们的研究得出了三个主要发现：第一，在所有执行的空间任务中，全盲儿童总体表现比视力正常和低视力儿童更差；第二，在相同的听觉空间任务中，低视力儿童表现与视力正常儿童相当或更好；第三，较高的残余视力水平与听觉定位任务动态条件下更好的空间表现呈正相关，表明残余视力越高，空间表现越好。这些结果表明，早期视觉体验在空间认知发展中具有重要作用，即使在视觉校准关键期的视觉输入部分退化的情况下，如低视力儿童。总体而言，这些结果揭示了对视力受损儿童空间损伤进行早期评估以及早期干预以预防孤立和社会排斥风险的重要性。
