Congenitally blind adults show higher verbal backwards digit span than sighted controls¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q3 · i3 large
Currency · newest study 2017 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i3 Congenitally blind participants scored significantly higher than sighted controls on the verbal backwards digit span task. → Occelli Valeria 2017

Evidence¶

Occelli Valeria 2017¶

Occelli Valeria, Lacey Simon, Stephens Careese, Merabet Lotfi B., Sathian K. (2017). Enhanced Verbal Abilities in The Congenitally Blind. Experimental Brain Research. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436932/

q3 · i3 · associational · r2

ANCOVA of verbal backwards digit span (WAIS-R subtest with an added 9-digit level to counter ceiling effects) in the same 25 participants. Blind participants scored "11.3 ± .7" versus sighted "7.7 ± .5", a large effect (d = 1.86).

"The blind also outperformed the sighted on the backwards digit span task (11.3 ± .7 vs. 7.7 ± .5 respectively: F1,20 = 19.8, p < .001, d = 1.86; Figure 3C) after factoring out the covariates"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Digit span correlates with phonemic fluency in the congenitally blind but not the sighted — related
• Congenitally blind adults outperform sighted controls on verbal memory recall across timepoints — related
• Congenitally blind adults produce more items on phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks than sighted controls — related
• No significant group difference in working memory as measured by the Digit Span Backward subtest