The Influence of Early Visual Deprivation on Audio-Spatial Working Memory

Objective: This study investigates how spatial working memory skills, and the processing and retrieval of distal auditory spatial information are influenced by visual experience. Method: We developed an experimental paradigm using an acoustic simulation. The performance of congenitally blind and sighted participants (n = 9 per group) was compared when recalling sequences of spatialised auditory items in the same or reverse order of presentation. Two experimental conditions based on stimuli features were tested: non-semantic and semantic. Results: Blind participants had a shorter memory span in the backward than the forward order of presentation. In contrast, sighted participants did not, revealing that blindness affects spatial information processing with greater executive source involvement. Furthermore, we found that blind subjects performed worse overall than the sighted group and that the semantic information significantly improved the performance, regardless of the experimental group and the sequences' order of presentation. Conclusions: Lack of early visual experience affects the ability to encode the surrounding space. Congenital blindness influences the processing and retrieval of spatial auditory items, suggesting that visual experience plays a pivotal role in calibrating spatial memory abilities using the remaining sensory modalities.

Automated summary

The study found that congenitally blind individuals have shorter memory spans than sighted individuals when recalling spatialized auditory items. Semantic information significantly improved performance for both blind and sighted participants, indicating the pivotal role of visual experience in calibrating spatial memory abilities.