Until recently, a commonly held view was that blindness resulted in enhanced auditory abilities, underpinned by the beneficial effects of cross-modal neuroplasticity. This viewpoint has been challenged by studies showing that blindness results in poorer performance for some auditory spatial tasks. It is now clear that visual loss does not result in a general increase or decrease in all auditory abilities. Although several hypotheses have been proposed to explain why certain auditory abilities are enhanced while others are degraded, these are often limited to a specific subset of tasks. A comprehensive explanation encompassing auditory abilities assessed in fully blind and partially sighted populations and spanning spatial and non-spatial cognition has not so far been proposed. The current article proposes a framework comprising a set of nine principles that can be used to predict whether auditory abilities are enhanced or degraded. The validity of these principles is assessed by comparing their predictions with a wide range of empirical evidence concerning the effects of visual loss on spatial and non-spatial auditory abilities. Developmental findings and the effects of early- versus late-onset visual loss are discussed. Ways of improving auditory abilities for individuals with visual loss and reducing auditory spatial deficits are summarized. A new Perceptual Restructuring Hypothesis is proposed within the framework, positing that the auditory system is restructured to provide the most accurate information possible given the loss of the visual signal and utilizing available cortical resources, resulting in different auditory abilities getting better or worse according to the nine principles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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一个解释视觉损失对人类听觉能力影响的框架。

直到最近，普遍持有的观点是失明会导致听觉能力增强，这是由跨模式神经可塑性的有益影响所支持的。这一观点受到研究的挑战，研究表明失明会导致某些听觉空间任务的表现较差。现在很明显，视力丧失不会导致所有听觉能力的普遍增加或减少。尽管已经提出了几种假设来解释为什么某些听觉能力增强而其他听觉能力降低，但这些假设通常仅限于特定的任务子集。迄今为止还没有提出全面的解释，包括在完全失明和部分失明的人群中评估的听觉能力以及跨越空间和非空间认知。当前文章提出了一个框架，该框架包含一组九项原则，可用于预测听觉能力是增强还是降低。这些原则的有效性是通过将它们的预测与关于视觉损失对空间和非空间听觉能力影响的广泛经验证据进行比较来评估的。讨论了发育结果以及早发性与晚发性视力丧失的影响。总结了提高视力丧失个体听觉能力和减少听觉空间缺陷的方法。在该框架内提出了一种新的感知重构假设，假设听觉系统被重构，以在视觉信号丢失和利用可用皮层资源的情况下提供最准确的信息，导致不同的听觉能力根据九大原则变好或变差。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。