Journal
RESTORATIVE NEUROLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 28, Issue 2, Pages 251-257Publisher
IOS PRESS
DOI: 10.3233/RNN-2010-0526
Keywords
Visual deprivation; cataract; face recognition; lip-reading; audio-visual integration
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Funding
- German Resarch Foundation (DFG) [Ro 1226/4-3]
- Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) [01GW0561]
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Purpose: The investigation of patients treated for bilateral congenital cataracts allows to study the development of visual and multisensory functions after a period of visual deprivation in early infancy. In the present study, cataract patients were tested for their capability to recognize faces and to integrate auditory and visual speech information. Methods: In Experiment 1, 12 cataract patients were tested with the Benton Facial Recognition Test. In Experiment 2, a McGurk paradigm was used that investigated audio-visual interaction and lip-reading capabilities. Here, fifteen cataract patients participated and were compared to normally sighted controls and to visually impaired controls. Results: In the Benton Facial Recognition Test, cataract patients' performance was unimpaired when target and test face were identical. By contrast, they performed worse than a normally sighted control group when head orientation and/or lighting conditions of the test faces were changed. In the McGurk paradigm, cataract patients displayed impaired lip-reading abilities and a reduced audio-visual interaction compared to normally sighted controls. The latter deficit prevailed even in a sub-group matched for lip-reading capacities with a normally sighted control sub-group. Conclusion: These results suggest that visual input in early infancy is a prerequisite for a normal development of visual and multisensory functions.
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