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      Haptic Spatial Configuration Learning in Deaf and Hearing Individuals

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      Author(s): 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 2 , 5 , *
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      Publication date (Electronic):
      Journal: PLoS ONE
      Publisher: Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          The present study investigated haptic spatial configuration learning in deaf individuals, hearing sign language interpreters and hearing controls. In three trials, participants had to match ten shapes haptically to the cut-outs in a board as fast as possible. Deaf and hearing sign language users outperformed the hearing controls. A similar difference was observed for a rotated version of the board. The groups did not differ, however, on a free relocation trial. Though a significant sign language experience advantage was observed, comparison to results from a previous study testing the same task in a group of blind individuals showed it to be smaller than the advantage observed for the blind group. These results are discussed in terms of how sign language experience and sensory deprivation benefit haptic spatial configuration processing.

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          Tactile acuity is enhanced in blindness.

          Daniel Goldreich, Ingrid M. Kanics (2003)
          Functional imaging studies in blind subjects have shown tactile activation of cortical areas that normally subserve vision, but whether blind people have enhanced tactile acuity has long been controversial. We compared the passive tactile acuity of blind and sighted subjects on a fully automated grating orientation task and used multivariate Bayesian data analysis to determine predictors of acuity. Acuity was significantly superior in blind subjects, independently of the degree of childhood vision, light perception level, or Braille reading. Acuity was strongly dependent on the force of contact between the stimulus surface and the skin, declined with subject age, and was better in women than in men. Despite large intragroup variability, the difference between blind and sighted subjects was highly significant: the average blind subject had the acuity of an average sighted subject of the same gender but 23 years younger. The results suggest that crossmodal plasticity may underlie tactile acuity enhancement in blindness.
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            Tactile spatial acuity enhancement in blindness: evidence for experience-dependent mechanisms.

            Michael Wong, Vishi Gnanakumaran, Daniel Goldreich (2011)
            Tactile spatial acuity is enhanced in blindness, according to several studies, but the cause of this enhancement has been controversial. Two competing hypotheses are the tactile experience hypothesis (reliance on the sense of touch drives tactile-acuity enhancement) and the visual deprivation hypothesis (the absence of vision itself drives tactile-acuity enhancement). Here, we performed experiments to distinguish between these two hypotheses. We used force-controlled grating orientation tasks to compare the passive (finger stationary) tactile spatial acuity of 28 profoundly blind and 55 normally sighted humans on the index, middle, and ring fingers of each hand, and on the lips. The tactile experience hypothesis predicted that blind participants would outperform the sighted on the fingers, and that Braille reading would correlate with tactile acuity. The visual deprivation hypothesis predicted that blind participants would outperform the sighted on fingers and lips. Consistent with the tactile experience hypothesis, the blind significantly outperformed the sighted on all fingers, but not on the lips. Additionally, among blind participants, proficient Braille readers on their preferred reading index finger outperformed nonreaders. Finally, proficient Braille readers performed better with their preferred reading index finger than with the opposite index finger, and their acuity on the preferred reading finger correlated with their weekly reading time. These results clearly implicate reliance on the sense of touch as the trigger for tactile spatial acuity enhancement in the blind, and suggest the action of underlying experience-dependent neural mechanisms such as somatosensory and/or cross-modal cortical plasticity.
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              Tactile perception in blind Braille readers: a psychophysical study of acuity and hyperacuity using gratings and dot patterns.

              Arthur Grant, Mahesh C Thiagarajah, K. Sathian (2000)
              It is not clear whether the blind are generally superior to the sighted on measures of tactile sensitivity or whether they excel only on certain tests owing to the specifics of their tactile experience. We compared the discrimination performance of blind Braille readers and age-matched sighted subjects on three tactile tasks using precisely specified stimuli. Initially, the blind significantly outperformed the sighted at a hyperacuity task using Braille-like dot patterns, although, with practice, both groups performed equally well. On two other tasks, hyperacute discrimination of gratings that differed in ridge width and spatial-acuity-dependent discrimination of grating orientation, the performance of the blind did not differ significantly from that of sighted subjects. These results probably reflect the specificity of perceptual learning due to Braille-reading experience.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Marc O. Ernst: Role: Editor
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE
                Journal ID (publisher-id): plos
                Journal ID (pmc): plosone
                Title: PLoS ONE
                Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203
                Publication date Collection: 2013
                Publication date (Electronic): 11 April 2013
                Volume: 8
                Issue: 4
                Electronic Location Identifier: e61336
                Affiliations
                [1 ]HU University of Applied Sciences School of Sign Language Interpreting, Utrecht, The Netherlands
                [2 ]Helmholtz Institute, Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
                [3 ]Helmholtz Institute, Physics of Man, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
                [4 ]VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                [5 ]Department of Neurology, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
                Bielefeld University, Germany
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: RVD AK AP. Performed the experiments: RVD. Analyzed the data: RVD AK AP. Wrote the paper: RVD AK AP.

                Article
                Publisher ID: PONE-D-12-40286
                DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061336
                PMC ID: 3623816
                PubMed ID: 23593465
                SO-VID: 31854ffa-f2b6-4123-987b-1cb822d71e6f
                Copyright statement: Copyright @ 2013
                License:

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                Date received : 20 December 2012
                Date accepted : 8 March 2013
                Page count
                Pages: 5
                Funding
                This work was supported by the Hoge School Utrecht and by Utrecht University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Subject: Research Article
                Subject: Biology
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Sensory Perception
                Subject: Sensory Deprivation
                Subject: Sensory Systems
                Subject: Medicine
                Subject: Mental Health
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Sensory Perception
                Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Memory
                Subject: Experimental Psychology
                Subject: Neuropsychology
                Subject: Sensory Perception

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized
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                ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized

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