Deaf children have less peripheral vision compared to hearing children

Children who are born deaf have less peripheral vision compared to hearing children.

New research funded by the RNID, looked into the development of peripheral vision in deaf and hearing children from childhood to adulthood.

“We found that deaf children see less peripherally than hearing children, but, typically, go on to develop better than normal peripheral vision by adulthood,” says Dr Charlotte Codina, from the University Of Sheffield’s Academic Unit of Ophthalmology and Orthoptics, who undertook the study.

“Important vision changes are occurring as deaf children grow up and one current theory is that they have not yet learnt to focus their attention on stimuli in the periphery until their vision matures at the age of 11 or 12. As research in this area continues, it will be interesting to identify factors which can help deaf children to make this visual improvement earlier.”