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Recent research shows that deaf sign language users can outperform hearing non-signers in some tests of visual cognition.

Our findings add to evidence showing that deaf signers are at an advantage in some respects, including the retention of detailed visual memories over the longer term. The relative contributions of factors including sign language fluency, protracted practice, and neural plasticity are still to be established. Our findings provide evidence that deaf signers can demonstrate superior visual long-term memory, possibly because of enhanced visual attention during encoding. Deaf individuals also performed better in a scene-discrimination test, which correlated positively with performance on the long-term memory test. Our data revealed that deaf individuals outperformed hearing people in a visual long-term memory test that probed the fine detail of new memories. We report a study investigating this possibility.

However, it is unknown if deaf signers’ retention of detailed visual information is superior following more extended periods. Furthermore, they can retain visual information better over short periods, i.e., seconds. Recent evidence shows that deaf signers outperform hearing non-signers in some tests of visual attention and discrimination.