Deaf and hearing children: A comparison of face perception

Deaf and hearing adults perceive faces differently. This study investigates whether these differences are acquired during childhood development. We characterized facial perception in deaf and hearing children aged 7-17 using a perceptual discrimination task. Configural and featural information was manipulated in the eye and mouth facial regions. Participants were asked whether two faces presented simultaneously were different. Deaf and hearing children performed better in featural than configural discriminations and in mouth than eye discriminations. Compared with children with typical hearing, deaf children performed better in featural and mouth judgments but had longer reaction times with strongest effects at 7-8 and 13-14 years old. Type and location contributed jointly in deaf children's face perception with different configural but similar featural discriminations in mouth and eye locations. However, children with typical hearing showed different featural and configural judgments in both locations. Thus, featural and configural information effects on location processing differ between the two groups.