Signal Detection Analysis of Visual Flicker in Deaf and Hearing Individuals

Abstract

A comparison of deaf and hearing subjects on temporal visual resolving power was conducted within a signal-detection paradigm. Subjects were required to make forced-choice judgments of a visual-flicker task under three stimulus probability conditions (0.25, 0.50, and 0.75). A total of 600 trials were given each subject from which d′ and Beta, indices for sensory sensitivity and response bias respectively, were computed. No significant differences existed on sensory sensitivity or response bias which questions some traditional assumptions about sensory compensation.