A Study on the Sustained Attention Development of Hearing Impaired Population

In the present study,cancellation test was used to explore sustained attention development of hearing impaired children and adults.207 hearing impaired and hearing participants were selected by using Raven Progressive Matrices intelligence test.Results showed clear age-related increases in processing speed for both hearing impaired and hearing participants.The hit rate of the hearing impaired children was significantly lower than that of the hearing children among aged 7-9 group,while that difference among other aged group was not found.The false alert rate of the hearing impaired adolescents was significantly higher than that of the hearing adolescents among aged 7-14 group.We interpret these results and concluded that,both hearing impaired and hearing participants had the similar developmental trajectory of the sustained attention;The ability of children's sustained attention appeared to improve with age,and in adolescence it reached the peak;The hearing impaired participants had the comparable sustained attention skills to the matched hearing peers.Besides,the results of the hearing impaired participants showed that they could maintain their attention and vigilance on the current task over the observation period.