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Deaf, blind or deaf-blind: Is touch enhanced?

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Abstract

When someone looses one type of sensory input, s/he may compensate by using the sensory information conveyed by other senses. To verify whether loosing a sense or two has consequences on a spared sensory modality, namely touch, and whether these consequences depend on the type of sensory loss, we investigated the effects of deafness and blindness on temporal and spatial tactile tasks in deaf, blind and deaf-blind people. Deaf and deaf-blind people performed the spatial tactile task better than the temporal one, while blind and controls showed the opposite pattern. Deaf and deaf-blind participants were impaired in temporal discrimination as compared to controls, while deaf-blind individuals outperformed blind participants in the spatial tactile task. Overall, sensory-deprived participants did not show an enhanced tactile performance. We speculate that discriminative touch is not so relevant in humans, while social touch is. Probably, more complex tactile tasks would have revealed an increased performance in sensory-deprived people.

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Notes

  1. 0 = normal vision, 1 = residual vision between 2/10 and 3/10 dioptres and/or residual binocular perimeter between 50 % and 60 %; 2 = residual vision between 1/10 and 2/10 dioptres and/or residual binocular perimeter between 30 and 50 %; 3 = residual vision <1/10 dioptres and/or residual binocular perimeter <10 %; 5 = complete blindness.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to La Lega del Filo d’Oro for their help in recruiting and testing deaf-blind participants. They are also grateful to Martina Gerosa for helping in recruiting deaf participants and to Maria Rosaria de Filippis from the Unione Italiana Ciechi di Milano.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126, Milan, Italy

    Costanza Papagno, Carlo Cecchetto, Alberto Pisoni & Nadia Bolognini

  2. NeuroMI, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy

    Costanza Papagno, Alberto Pisoni & Nadia Bolognini

  3. Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy

    Nadia Bolognini

Authors
  1. Costanza Papagno
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  2. Carlo Cecchetto
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  3. Alberto Pisoni
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  4. Nadia Bolognini
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Correspondence to Costanza Papagno.

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Papagno, C., Cecchetto, C., Pisoni, A. et al. Deaf, blind or deaf-blind: Is touch enhanced?. Exp Brain Res 234, 627–636 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-015-4488-1

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