@article{60e684ef809543e8a36869c6d87d2e40,
title = "Evidence for superior encoding of detailed visual memories in deaf signers",
abstract = "Recent evidence shows that deaf signers outperform hearing non-signers in some tests of visual attention and discrimination. Furthermore, they can retain visual information better over short periods, i.e., seconds. However, it is unknown if deaf signers' retention of detailed visual information is superior following more extended periods. We report a study investigating this possibility. Our data revealed that deaf individuals outperformed hearing people in a visual long-term memory test that probed the fine detail of new memories. Deaf individuals also performed better in a scene-discrimination test, which correlated positively with performance on the long-term memory test. Our findings provide evidence that deaf signers can demonstrate superior visual long-term memory, possibly because of enhanced visual attention during encoding. The relative contributions of factors including sign language fluency, protracted practice, and neural plasticity are still to be established. Our findings add to evidence showing that deaf signers are at an advantage in some respects, including the retention of detailed visual memories over the longer term.",
keywords = "Deafness, Hearing, Humans, Memory, Neuronal Plasticity, Sign Language",
author = "Michael Craig and Michaela Dewar and Graham Turner and Trudi Collier and Narinder Kapur",
note = "Funding Information: We are thankful to those who gave their time to participate in our research and to colleagues (Marion Fletcher, Andy Carmichael, and Tessa Slaughter) in the Department of Language & Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University, for their support. This project was supported by an Internal Research Grant from the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, UK. In addition, Dr Michael Craig was supported by a Fellowship award from Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s Society, UK (grant number 316). Funding Information: In keeping with recent findings, we hypothesise that the superior memory quality in deaf participants resulted from enhanced encoding capabilities. Although our deaf and hearing groups{\textquoteright} performance on the judgement making task was matched, it is plausible that the two groups encoded the photos differently. Research demonstrates enhanced visual attention in deaf signers, and this is proposed to underly deaf gains in visual cognition tasks. This proposal is supported by eye-tracking research demonstrating increased exploration of visual stimuli in deaf signers. In hearing people, eye-tracking research shows that the number of fixations during encoding positively predicts subsequent performance in lure discrimination tests, like the one used in our study. It is thought that a larger number of fixations to a stimulus during encoding increases the likelihood of a higher-quality memory trace being formed. Thus, we propose that enhanced attention in our deaf participants, possibly through a higher number of fixations, led to the formation of memory traces that were rich in detail. These detail-rich memory traces should have been more discriminable from similar lures, thus resulting in superior performance in our LDI measure. Future work could test this proposal using eye-tracking methods. , Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022, The Author(s).",
year = "2022",
month = may,
day = "31",
doi = "10.1038/s41598-022-13000-y",
language = "English",
volume = "12",
journal = "Scientific Reports",
issn = "2045-2322",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
}