Residual Sensory Capacities of the Deaf: A Signal Detection Analysis of a Visual Discrimination Task

Abstract

This experiment compared the visual sensory sensitivity of deaf and hearing subjects in a signal detection paradigm. Subjects ( ns:= 6) were required to give forced-choice responses to a brightness discrimination task under three stimulus probability conditions (0.25, 0.50, and 0.75). A total of 1,800 trials were given to each subject and utilized to construct isosensitivity functions and d' and Beta, indices for sensory sensitivity and response bias, respectively. The results showed that no enhanced sensory sensitivity is present for these deaf children and questions the classical sensory compensation hypothesis. Furthermore, the deaf subjects responded in a relatively bias-free manner to variations in stimulus probability.