Deaf People’s Attentional Bias Towards Visually Threatening Stimuli

At present,there are two views about the visual attention ability of the deaf: the view of visual attention defect and the view of visual attention compensation.From the perspective of visual attention deficit,it is believed that the integration of multiple sensory organs is crucial to the development of each sensory organ.Due to the damage of the deaf’s auditory senses,other senses also have defects,resulting in the weakening of their visual attention(Grafman,2000).From the perspective of visual attention compensation,it is believed that the functional compensation of other senses to adapt to the complex environment can enhance the visual attention of the deaf due to the damage of their auditory senses(Backman & Dixon,1992).There is no consistent conclusion about the effect of hearing loss on vision.Previous studies have found that threatening stimuli are more likely to cause attention bias.Using threatening stimulus search paradigm,mohman and Flykt(2001)found that the speed of searching threat related objects in threat independent objects is significantly faster than that in threat related objects,indicating that people respond more to threatening stimuli than non threatening stimulus visual search Hurry up.Many subsequent studies adopted different paradigms and repeated similar results(Wang Fuxing,Li Wenjing,Yan Zhiqiang,Duan Zhaohui,Li Hui,2015;Lo bue &rakison,2013;thrasher & Lo bue,2016).Due to the lack of auditory information,will deaf people rely more on vision to obtain dangerous information,so as to enhance their attention preference to dangerous stimuli? How deaf people’s perception of dangerous visual stimuli is affected by hearing loss remains to be investigated.Therefore,this study investigated the difference of attention preference of the deaf and the healthy people to the threatening stimulus,and compared the difference of attention preference of the deaf and the healthy people to the threatening stimulus.In Experiment 1,visual search was used to manipulate the types of stimuli(threatening stimulus and non threatening stimulus)to investigate the attentional bias of deaf and hearing subjects to threatening stimulus.The results showed that the response time of deaf subjects to search for threatening stimuli was significantly faster than that of healthy subjects.It shows that the theory of visual compensation for the deaf is more supported.In Experiment 2,on the basis of Experiment 1,the effects of different types of stimuli were excluded,and visual search was used to manipulate the types of stimuli(threatening stimuli,non threatening stimuli),and the attention bias of deaf and hearing subjects to threatening stimuli was investigated.The results showed that the response time of deaf subjects to search for threatening stimuli was still significantly faster than that of healthy subjects.It also shows that the theory of visual compensation for the deaf is more supported.In Experiment 3 manipulated the location(central visual area,peripheral visual area)and stimulation conditions(consistent,inconsistent)of the distractors to investigate the difference ofattention bias of the deaf in peripheral visual area and central visual area.The results showed that there was no significant difference in the degree of interference in CCTV and peripheral visual areas.The results show that the increased attention bias of the hearing impaired group to the threatening stimuli may be due to the fact that the hearing impaired group is more dependent on vision to obtain the dangerous information.This study further improves the framework of the deaf vision theory,which is of great significance to improve the safety and quality of life of the deaf.