CogBlog – A Cognitive Psychology Blog

Have you ever wondered if when one sensory module is impaired, other sensory systems learn to develop other means to counteract that deficiency? Past studies have shown that deaf individuals have a larger capability to focus on simple visual stimuli in the parafovea. The parafovea is a region in the eye that surrounds your fovea, the central pit of the eye that is responsible for sharp, central vision. Large rates of illiteracy in the deaf population have caused people to question whether deaf individuals wide range of focus in the parafovea, causes reduced processing in the fovea. A recent study done at the University of California San Diego has shown that deaf people’s parafoveal vision does not cause reduced vision on the fovea and they actually have a wider range of sharp vision which researchers found and can actually aid them in complex visual tasks such as reading (Bélanger et al. 2012).

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Two summers ago, I volunteered at a special education academic program at the Weston High School in Weston, Massachusetts. As I observed the students work, I was astounded by how behind in learning their disabilities put them compared to the average level their age would normally be associated with. While I was there, I helped a 13-year-old blind girl with her reading comprehension homework. I was asked to dictate a passage to her, and she had to answer one of four questions that she read in brail. As I watched her fingers trace the dots, and dictate to me the correct answer, I was both astounded and intrigued.  I wondered and still wonder, how does the human body adapt and reorganize itself to compensate for deficits, by birth or by injury? More specifically, how can blindness affect one’s cognitive abilities, in particular the various parts of the human memory?

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