Revisitando a atenção visual nos surdos

Individuals with profound deafness rely strongly on their vision to interact with the environment. The improvement of visual performance is a result of hearing deprivation and it is assumed by literature as a result of intermodal changes that occur in the last stages of visual processing.This paper aims at presenting a review of literature on this subject, in order to highlight different approaches that result from it. To this end, we discussed Visual Attention in Deaf as a concept and as an object, seeking to demonstrate the visual performance in comparison with the auditory sensory deprivation. It is followed by the systematization of the different approaches to the subject and, in particular, those that focus on the following visual tasks: (i) Orientation of Attention, (ii) Central and Peripheral Visual Processing and (iii) Visual Contrast Sensitivity. A great part of the research has supported the idea that the loss of the hearing modality in the deaf can lead to an improvement in the visual modality.