A comparison of auditory attention in blind and sighted people

Individuals with blindness indirectly have a deficiency in information. The purpose of this study is to compare the attentional performance of the blind subjects with matched sighted controls. Forty-seven individuals with acquired blindness and fifty-five healthy volunteers participated in this cross-sectional study. The auditory Continuous Performance Test (CPT) and auditory Stroop test were used for evaluation of auditory attention tasks. The independent t-test was used to compare the blind with the sighted controls.Findings show that the sighted and blind subjects demonstrate no significant difference in the Commission Error (P= 0.716), Omission Error (P= 0.084), Correct Answer (P=0.969) and reaction time (P= 0.573) measures of the continuous performance test. In contrast, the stroop test showed significant differences between the two groups, with the sighted subjects showing higher performance in accuracy and reaction time in all stages (P<0.001).Individuals with acquired blindness had no advantage in sustained attention and were at a disadvantage in selective attention compared to sighted individuals. There are not any preferences in auditory attention of individuals with blindness.