Döva och normalhörandes bedömningar av manipulerade illusionsbilder

Sammanfattning: Abstract The present study examined if early deaf people and people with severe hearing loss perceive visual information differently than hearing people. An experiment was conducted with eight deaf participants and eight participants with normal hearing. The participants were between the ages of 18-74 years. The participants were asked to look at fifteen different images portraying manipulated illusions, and then assess if the images were of the same size. Subsequently another image depicting a different illusion with a face hidden in it was presented to the participants. Their task was to find the hidden face in the image. A Mann-Whitney U-test revealed that the deaf and the people with severe hearing loss had significant better results of the first fifteen images. This indicates that it was easier for this group to discover the changes of the manipulated images. Still there was no significant difference between the results of the two groups at the last image with the hidden face. The results of the study indicate that early deaf individuals might have a more evolved visual perception than hearing people.