Aspects Of Visual Attention Research Articles

Video game experience and its influence on visual attention parameters: An investigation using the framework of the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA)

Experts with video game experience, in contrast to non-experienced persons, are superior in multiple domains of visual attention. However, it is an open question which basic aspects of attention underlie this superiority. We approached this question using the framework of Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) with tools that allowed us to assess various parameters that are related to different visual attention aspects (e.g., perception threshold, processing speed, visual short-term memory storage capacity, top-down control, spatial distribution of attention) and that are measurable on the same experimental basis. In Experiment 1, we found advantages of video game experts in perception threshold and visual processing speed; the latter being restricted to the lower positions of the used computer display. The observed advantages were not significantly moderated by general person-related characteristics such as personality traits, sensation seeking, intelligence, social anxiety, or health status. Experiment 2 tested a potential causal link between the expert advantages and video game practice with an intervention protocol. It found no effects of action video gaming on perception threshold, visual short-term memory storage capacity, iconic memory storage, top-down control, and spatial distribution of attention after 15days of training. However, observations of a selected improvement of processing speed at the lower positions of the computer screen after video game training and of retest effects are suggestive for limited possibilities to improve basic aspects of visual attention (TVA) with practice.

Video quality assessment using visual attention computational models

A recent development in the area of image and video quality consists of trying to incorporate aspects of visual attention in the design of visual quality metrics, mostly using the assumption that visual distortions appearing in less salient areas might be less visible and, therefore, less annoying. This research area is still in its infancy and results obtained by different groups are not yet conclusive. Among the works that have reported some improvements, most use subjective saliency maps, i.e., saliency maps generated from eye-tracking data obtained experimentally. Other works address the image quality problem, not focusing on how to incorporate visual attention into video signals. We investigate the benefits of incorporating bottom-up video saliency maps (obtained using Itti's computational model) into video quality metrics. In particular, we com- pare the performance of four full-reference video quality metrics with their modified versions, which had saliency maps incorporated into the algorithm. Results show that the addition of video saliency maps improve the per- formance of most quality metrics tested, but the highest gains were obtained for the metrics that only took into consideration spatial degradations. © 2014 SPIE and IS&T (DOI: 10.1117/1.JEI.23.6.061107)

Perceptual training boosts separable aspects of visual attention and working memory

While how training improves the performance on the trained task itself has been extensively studied, it remains unclear whether and, if so, how such training influences global cognitive functions such as attention and working memory. To address this question, four participants were trained on a texture discrimination task (TDT, Karni & Sagi, 1991,PNAS) on one hemifield for six days (840 trials a day). We assessed behavioral changes in attention and working memory abilities before and after the perceptual training. Specifically we examined effects of training on three attentional components (alerting, orienting, and executive filtering) measured by a Lateralized Attention Network Task (Greene, et al., 2008, Brain Cogn.) and two working memory abilities (precision and capacity) indexed by a visual-orientation working memory task (Machizawa, Goh & Driver, 2012, Psychol. Sci.). As in Karni & Sagi (1991), performance on a TDT improved due to training. With regards to working memory components, performance for the ‘precision’ of working memory (the ability to retain fewer number of items with fine-precision) showed significant improvement on the trained hemifield (T3 = 2.75, p <.05, one-tail), but not on the other hemifield (T3 = 0.21, p = .42, one-tail). The ‘capacity’ of working memory (the ability to retain a number of items with coarse-precision) significantly increased (estimated number of items can be retained, K = 3.02) compared to the pre-training baseline (K = 2.53). Notably, such improvement was observed in both hemifields irrespective of which hemifield was trained on TDT. With regards to attentional components, we found a trend of improvement for executive filtering but not for alerting or orienting components. These results demonstrate that training on a visual task not only improves the task performance but also certain aspects of cognitive functions such as attention and working memory. Furthermore, they also indicate precision and capacity of working memory are dissociated. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013

Development of attention networks in deaf children: Support for the integrative hypothesis

Early auditory deprivation is known to affect visual attention, yet the early effects of auditory deprivation on visual attention cannot be described simply as deficiencies or enhancements, because selected aspects of visual attention could be modified in various ways along the developmental trajectory. However, few studies have explored the development of these various aspects of visual attention in deaf children. In this paper we study the developmental trajectory of three aspects of visual attention (alerting, orienting and executive control attention networks) in a group of deaf children between 6 and 12 years of age. We used the attention network test to explore the development of the three attention networks and a child-friendly version of the cost-benefit paradigm to characterize the development of the basic operations of orienting. Our results showed a pattern of specific but varied outcomes with respect to the effects of auditory deprivation on these attention networks. First, auditory deprivation can impair development of the alerting network. Second, auditory deprivation can enhance two elementary operations of orienting: moving and engaging. Third, the executive control network showed a developmental trajectory that was neither deficient nor enhanced, but rather similar to that observed with hearing children. Taken together, these results are consistent with the integrative hypothesis of the effects of auditory deprivation on visual attention.

Project DyAdd: Visual attention in adult dyslexia and ADHD

In this study of the project DyAdd, three aspects of visual attention were investigated in adults (18–55years) with dyslexia (n=35) or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n=22), and in healthy controls (n=35). Temporal characteristics of visual attention were assessed with Attentional Blink (AB), capacity of visual attention with Multiple Object Tracking (MOT), and spatial aspects of visual attention with Useful Field of View (UFOV) task. Results showed that adults with dyslexia had difficulties performing the AB and UFOV tasks, which were explained by an impaired ability to process dual targets, longer AB recovery time, and deficits in processing rapidly changing visual displays. The ADHD group did not have difficulties in any of the tasks. Further, performance in the visual attention tasks predicted variation in measures of phonological processing and reading when all of the participants were considered together. Thus, difficulties in tasks of visual attention were related to dyslexia and variation of visual attention had a role in the reading ability of the general population.

Visual Attention Modulates Insight Versus Analytic Solving of Verbal Problems.

Behavioral and neuroimaging findings indicate that distinct cognitive and neural processes underlie solving problems with sudden insight. Moreover, people with less focused attention sometimes perform better on tests of insight and creative problem solving. However, it remains unclear whether different states of attention, within individuals, influence the likelihood of solving problems with insight or with analysis. In this experiment, participants (N = 40) performed a baseline block of verbal problems, then performed one of two visual tasks, each emphasizing a distinct aspect of visual attention, followed by a second block of verbal problems to assess change in performance. After participants engaged in a center-focused flanker task requiring relatively focused visual attention, they reported solving more verbal problems with analytic processing. In contrast, after participants engaged in a rapid object identification task requiring attention to broad space and weak associations, they reported solving more verbal problems with insight. These results suggest that general attention mechanisms influence both visual attention task performance and verbal problem solving.

The neural basis of visual attention

Visual attention is the mechanism the nervous system uses to highlight specific locations, objects or features within the visual field. This can be accomplished by making an eye movement to bring the object onto the fovea (overt attention) or by increased processing of visual information in neurons representing more peripheral regions of the visual field (covert attention). This review will examine two aspects of visual attention: the changes in neural responses within visual cortices due to the allocation of covert attention; and the neural activity in higher cortical areas involved in guiding the allocation of attention. The first section will highlight processes that occur during visual spatial attention and feature-based attention in cortical visual areas and several related models that have recently been proposed to explain this activity. The second section will focus on the parietofrontal network thought to be involved in targeting eye movements and allocating covert attention. It will describe evidence that the lateral intraparietal area, frontal eye field and superior colliculus are involved in the guidance of visual attention, and describe the priority map model, which is thought to operate in at least several of these areas.

Brief Report: Circumscribed Attention in Young Children with Autism

School-aged children and adolescents with autism demonstrate circumscribed attentional patterns to nonsocial aspects of complex visual arrays (Sasson et al. 2008). The current study downward extended these findings to a sample of 2-5 year-olds with autism and 2-5 year-old typically developing children. Eye-tracking was used to quantify discrete aspects of visual attention to picture arrays containing combinations of social pictures, pictures of objects frequently involved in circumscribed interests in persons with autism (e.g., trains), and pictures of more commonplace objects (e.g., clothing). The children with autism exhibited greater exploration and perseverative attention on objects related to circumscribed interests than did typically developing children. Results suggest that circumscribed attention may be an early emerging characteristic of autism.

When video game playing expands your mind's eye

Videogame playing puts extraordinary demands on our visual and motor skills, offering a unique opportunity to investigate learning and its limits in the visuo-motor domain. In a series of experiments, we have shown that videogame playing pushes the limits of visual attention skills. Videogame players (VGPs) were found to outperform non-videogame players (NVGPs) on the number of visual items they could apprehend at once as measured by an enumeration task, during the localization of eccentric targets among distractors as measured by the Useful Field of View, and during the processing of rapidly serially presented visual events as measured by the Attentional Blink paradigm. These results indicate that videogame playing enhances the capacity of visual attention as well as its spatial distribution and temporal resolution. Non-video gamers trained on a first-person point of view action videogame showed significant improvement from their pre-training scores on all three tasks indicating that as little as ten days of videogame playing can alter these fundamental aspects of visual attention. Thus, unlike most perceptual learning tasks that are rather specific, the learning induced by videogame playing generalizes to three rather different aspects of visual attention. There are multiple ways videogame training could lead to such an enhancement. Changes in known attentional bottlenecks is certainly a possibility; however speeded perceptual processes and/or better management of several tasks at the central executive level are also likely to contribute.

Visual performance and brain structures in the developing brain of pre-term infants

The presence of abnormal visual function has been related to overt lesions in the thalami, peritrigonal white matter (such as cavitational-necrotic periventricular leucomalacia) and optic radiations, and also to the extent of occipital cortex involvement. The normal development of visual function seems to depend on the integrity of a network that includes not only optic radiations and the primary visual cortex but also other cortical and subcortical areas, such as the frontal or temporal lobes or basal ganglia, which have been found to play a topical role in the development of vision. Therefore, the complex functions and functional connectivity of the developing brain of premature infants can be studied only with highly sophisticated techniques such as diffusion tensor tractography. The combined use of visual tests and neonatal structural and functional neuroimaging, which have become available for newborn infants, provides a better understanding of the correlation between structure and function from early life. This appears to be particularly relevant considering the essential role of early visual function in cognitive development. The identification of early visual impairment is also important, as it allows for early enrolment in intervention programmes. The association of clinical and functional studies to newer imaging techniques, which are being increasingly used also in neonates, are likely to provide further information on early aspects of vision and the mechanisms underlying brain plasticity, which are still not fully understood. Early exposure to a difficult postnatal environment together with early and unexpected removal from a protective milieu are exclusive and peculiar factors of prematurity that interfere with the normal development of the visual system in pre-term babies. The problem is further compounded by the influence of different perinatal brain lesions affecting the developing brain of premature babies. Nevertheless, in the last few decades, there have been considerable advances in our understanding of the development of vision in pre-term infants during early infancy. This has mainly been due to the development of age-specific tests assessing various aspects of visual function, from ophthalmological examination to more cortical aspects of vision, such as the ability to process orientation or different aspects of visual attention [1–7]. Improvements in understanding very early and specific neurological impairments in neurological functions have been reported in pre-term infants, known to be at risk of developing visual and visual-perceptual impairment. These impairments are due not only to retinopathy, a common finding in premature infants, but also to cerebral (central) visual impairment, secondary to brain lesions affecting the central visual pathway.

Attentional enhancements and deficits in deaf populations: An integrative review

The literature on visual attention in deaf individuals presents two competing views. On one hand, the deficit view proposes that auditory input is necessary for the development of visual attention; on the other hand, the compensation view holds that visual attention reorganizes to allow the individual to compensate for the lack of auditory input. While apparently contradictory, we suggest that these views shed complementary light on the cross-modal reorganization of visual attention after early deafness. First, these two fields of inquiry look at different aspects of attention. The deficit view is mostly supported by studies of allocation of attention in time, whereas the compensation view is backed by studies measuring the allocation of attention across space. Second, they focus on groups of different age and different background. Deficits have been documented mostly in children with mixed hearing loss aetiologies, whereas reorganization has been documented in a less representative, but more homogenous group of Deaf adults. We propose a more integrative view in which early auditory deprivation does not result in better or worse visual attention. Rather, selected aspects of visual attention are modified in various ways along the developmental trajectory as a result of early deafness.

Culture modulates eye-movements to visual novelty.

BackgroundWhen viewing complex scenes, East Asians attend more to contexts whereas Westerners attend more to objects, reflecting cultural differences in holistic and analytic visual processing styles respectively. This eye-tracking study investigated more specific mechanisms and the robustness of these cultural biases in visual processing when salient changes in the objects and backgrounds occur in complex pictures.Methodology/Principal FindingsChinese Singaporean (East Asian) and Caucasian US (Western) participants passively viewed pictures containing selectively changing objects and background scenes that strongly captured participants' attention in a data-driven manner. We found that although participants from both groups responded to object changes in the pictures, there was still evidence for cultural divergence in eye-movements. The number of object fixations in the US participants was more affected by object change than in the Singapore participants. Additionally, despite the picture manipulations, US participants consistently maintained longer durations for both object and background fixations, with eye-movements that generally remained within the focal objects. In contrast, Singapore participants had shorter fixation durations with eye-movements that alternated more between objects and backgrounds.Conclusions/SignificanceThe results demonstrate a robust cultural bias in visual processing even when external stimuli draw attention in an opposite manner to the cultural bias. These findings also extend previous studies by revealing more specific, but consistent, effects of culture on the different aspects of visual attention as measured by fixation duration, number of fixations, and saccades between objects and backgrounds.

Differential development of visual attention skills in school-age children

Children aged 7–17 years and adults aged 18–22 years were tested on three aspects of visual attention: the ability to distribute visual attention across the field to search for a target, the time required for attention to recover from being directed towards a target, and the number of objects to which attention can be simultaneously allocated. The data suggested different developmental trajectories for these components of visual attention within the same set of participants. This suggests that, to some extent, spatial, temporal and object-based attentional processes are subserved by different neural resources which develop at different rate. In addition, participants who played action games showed enhanced performance on all aspects of attention tested as compared to non-gamers. These findings reveal a potential facilitation of development of attentional skills in children who are avid players of action video games. As these games are predominantly drawing a male audience, young girls are at risk of under-performing on such tests, calling for a careful control of video game usage when assessing gender differences in attentional tasks.

Computational Neuroscience Approach to Attention, Memory, and Decision-Making

Event Abstract Back to Event Computational Neuroscience Approach to Attention, Memory, and Decision-Making Gustavo Deco1* 1 Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Spain Cognitive behaviour requires complex context-dependent processing of information that emerges from the links between attentional perceptual processes, working memory and reward-based evaluation of the performed actions. We describe a computational neuroscience theoretical framework, which shows how an attentional state held in a short-term memory in the prefrontal cortex can by top-down processing influence ventral and dorsal stream cortical areas using biased competition to account for many aspects of visual attention. We also show how within the prefrontal cortex an attentional bias can influence the mapping of sensory inputs to motor outputs, and thus play an important role in decision-making. We also show how the absence of expected rewards can switch the attentional bias signal, and thus rapidly and flexibly alter cognitive performance. This theoretical framework incorporates spiking and synaptic dynamics, which enable single neuron responses, fMRI activations, psychophysical results, the effects of pharmacological agents, and the effects of damage to parts of the system, to be explicitly simulated and predicted. This computational neuroscience framework provides an approach for integrating different levels of investigation of brain function, and for and top-down processes interact in visual cognition, and show how some apparently serial processes reflect the operation of interacting parallel distributed systems. Conference: 3rd Mediterranean Conference of Neuroscience , Alexandria, Egypt, 13 Dec - 16 Dec, 2009. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Symposium 01 – Neural dynamics, learning and functional recovery Citation: Deco G (2009). Computational Neuroscience Approach to Attention, Memory, and Decision-Making. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 3rd Mediterranean Conference of Neuroscience . doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.01.2009.16.006 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 18 Nov 2009; Published Online: 18 Nov 2009. * Correspondence: Gustavo Deco, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain, gustavo.deco@upf.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Gustavo Deco Google Gustavo Deco Google Scholar Gustavo Deco PubMed Gustavo Deco Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

A Computational Neuroscience Approach to Attention, Memory, and Decision &amp;ndash; Making

Event Abstract Back to Event A Computational Neuroscience Approach to Attention, Memory, and Decision – Making Gustavo Deco1* 1 Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Passeig de Circumval.lacio, Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Spain Cognitive behaviour requires complex context-dependent processing of information that emerges from the links between attentional perceptual processes, working memory and reward-based evaluation of the performed actions. We describe a computational neuroscience theoretical framework, which shows how an attentional state held in a short-term memory in the prefrontal cortex can by top-down processing influence ventral and dorsal stream cortical areas using biased competition to account for many aspects of visual attention. We also show how within the prefrontal cortex an attentional bias can influence the mapping of sensory inputs to motor outputs, and thus play an important role in decision-making. We also show how the absence of expected rewards can switch the attentional bias signal, and thus rapidly and flexibly alter cognitive performance. This theoretical framework incorporates spiking and synaptic dynamics, which enable single neuron responses, fMRI activations, psychophysical results, the effects of pharmacological agents, and the effects of damage to parts of the system, to be explicitly simulated and predicted. This computational neuroscience framework provides an approach for integrating different levels of investigation of brain function, and for and top-down processes interact in visual cognition, and show how some apparently serial processes reflect the operation of interacting parallel distributed systems. Conference: 3rd Mediterranean Conference of Neuroscience , Alexandria, Egypt, 13 Dec - 16 Dec, 2009. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Plenary lectures Citation: Deco G (2009). A Computational Neuroscience Approach to Attention, Memory, and Decision – Making. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 3rd Mediterranean Conference of Neuroscience . doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.01.2009.16.004 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 18 Nov 2009; Published Online: 18 Nov 2009. * Correspondence: Gustavo Deco, Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Passeig de Circumval.lacio, Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), 8 – 08003 Barcelona, Spain, gustavo.deco@upf.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Gustavo Deco Google Gustavo Deco Google Scholar Gustavo Deco PubMed Gustavo Deco Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Children with autism demonstrate circumscribed attention during passive viewing of complex social and nonsocial picture arrays

Although circumscribed interests are a hallmark characteristic of autism spectrum disorders, providing a means for quantifying their functional impairment has proven difficult. We developed a passive viewing task to measure aspects of visual attention in children with autism spectrum disorders and typically developing controls. Task stimuli included picture arrays that were matched for social and nonsocial content. Nonsocial content was balanced to include items related to circumscribed interests (e.g., trains) as well as more commonplace items (e.g., furniture). Discrete aspects of gaze behavior were quantified using eye-tracking technology. Results indicate that visual attention in the autism group was more circumscribed (as indicated by the exploration of fewer images), more perseverative (as indicated by longer fixation times per image explored), and more detail oriented (as indicated by a greater number of discrete fixations on explored images). This pattern of results was similar for both social and object arrays. Within the autism group, overall severity of repetitive behavior symptoms correlated positively with exploration of object pictures and negatively with perseveration on social pictures. Results suggest that children with autism have a domain-general pattern of atypical visual attention that may represent an exaggeration of a typical attentional process and is related to a tendency to perseverate on images of interest and explore them in a more detail-oriented manner. Discrete measures of visual attention may therefore provide a reasonable means of quantifying aspects of the repetitive behavior phenotype in autism.

Stimulus specific deficit on visual reversal learning after lesions of medial prefrontal cortex in the mouse

Tests of executive abilities, such as discrimination reversal and attentional set shifting, are sensitive to prefrontal cortex (PFC) damage in primates. The purpose of the present study was to use a primate reversal task to determine if PFC in the mouse is involved in similar cognitive functions. Mice with lesions of medial PFC and Sham operated control animals were trained on a series of visual problems in a computer-automated touchscreen apparatus using stimuli that varied in either pattern (lines) or luminance (black–white). PFC-lesioned mice learned to discriminate both sets of stimuli as readily as controls, but displayed a stimulus specific (pattern only) deficit on the reversal task. Analysis of error patterns on the line reversal suggests the deficit exhibited by PFC-lesioned mice was related to stimulus specific aspects of visual attention, rather than perseveration. These results demonstrate that medial PFC may play a role in control of directed attention and provide further evidence that the touchscreen procedure can be a useful tool for examining functional similarities in brain regions of very diverse species.

Shared attentional resources for global and local motion processing

One of the most important aspects of visual attention is its flexibility; our attentional "window" can be tuned to different spatial scales, allowing us to perceive large-scale global patterns and local features effortlessly. We investigated whether the perception of global and local motion competes for a common attentional resource. Subjects viewed arrays of individual moving Gabors that group to produce a global motion percept when subjects attended globally. When subjects attended locally, on the other hand, they could identify the direction of individual uncrowded Gabors. Subjects were required to devote their attention toward either scale of motion or divide it between global and local scales. We measured direction discrimination as a function of the validity of a precue, which was varied in opposite directions for global and local motion such that when the precue was valid for global motion, it was invalid for local motion and vice versa. There was a trade-off between global and local motion thresholds, such that increasing the validity of precues at one spatial scale simultaneously reduced thresholds at that spatial scale but increased thresholds at the other spatial scale. In a second experiment, we found a similar pattern of results for static-oriented Gabors: Attending to local orientation information impaired the subjects' ability to perceive globally defined orientation and vice versa. Thresholds were higher for orientation compared to motion, however, suggesting that motion discrimination in the first experiment was not driven by orientation information alone but by motion-specific processing. The results of these experiments demonstrate that a shared attentional resource flexibly moves between different spatial scales and allows for the perception of both local and global image features, whether these features are defined by motion or orientation.

A model of modes of attention and inattention for artificial perception

This paper considers several aspects of natural visual attention and its link to wider notions of awareness, natural and artificial, in the context of foveated vision. It builds on a theory of abductive perception; a formal definition for an artificial or robot perceptual system, using objects represented as feature clouds. It proposes a broad, but unifying approach to several aspects of visual attention in the light of this, including autonomic eye gaze movements, aspects of secondary and covert attention, and exogenous (sense driven) and endogenous (task driven) attention. Modes of attentional lapse, commonly referred to as inattentional blindness and change blindness, are also discussed in the context of the model presented.

Which aspects of visual attention are changed by deafness? The case of the Attentional Network Test

The loss of one sensory modality can lead to a reorganization of the other intact sensory modalities. In the case of individuals who are born profoundly deaf, there is growing evidence of changes in visual functions. Specifically, deaf individuals demonstrate enhanced visual processing in the periphery, and in particular enhanced peripheral visual attention. To further characterize those aspects of visual attention that may be modified by deafness, deaf and hearing individuals were compared on the Attentional Network Test (ANT). The ANT was selected as it provides a measure of the efficiency of three neurally distinct subsystems of visual attention: alerting, orienting and executive control. The alerting measure refers to the efficiency with which a temporal cue is used to direct attention towards a target event, and the orienting measure is an indicator of the efficiency with which a spatial cue focuses attention upon that target's spatial location. The executive control measure, on the other hand, is an indicator of the amount of interference from peripheral flankers on processing that central target. In two separate experiments, deaf and hearing individuals displayed similar alerting and orienting abilities indicating comparable attention across populations. As predicted by enhanced peripheral attention, deaf subjects were found to have larger flanker interference effects than hearing subjects. These results indicate that not all aspects of visual attention are modified by early deafness, suggesting rather specific effects of cross-modal plasticity.