Preferential-looking assessment of fusion and stereopsis in infants aged 1-6 months.

The ability of infants to discriminate zero-disparity stimuli from both reverse contrast (rivalrous) and disparate (stereoscopic) stimuli was investigated in a two-alternative, forced-choice, preferential-looking paradigm. Few infants under 4 months of age demonstrated discrimination for any stimulus pairing. Of the infants tested at 4 months of age, approximately 70% preferred zero-disparity stimuli to reverse contrast stimuli, and 82% preferred stereoscopic stimuli to zero-disparity stimuli. Nearly 100% of 5- and 6-month-old infants exhibited these preferences. These findings suggest that sensory fusion is not present at birth but develops rapidly over the first 6 months of life. The time course for the development of sensory fusion was similar to the time course for the development of stereopsis in nine infants tested longitudinally.

[1]  Shinsuke Shimojo,et al.  Development of vernier acuity in infants , 1984, Vision Research.

[2]  R. Held,et al.  The development of binocular summation in human infants. , 1983, Investigative ophthalmology & visual science.

[3]  R Held,et al.  The Development of Vergence Does Not Account for the Onset of Stereopsis , 1983, Perception.

[4]  R. Held,et al.  Stereoacuity development for crossed and uncrossed disparities in human infants , 1982, Vision Research.

[5]  G. Baumgartner,et al.  Development of stereopsis and cortical binocularity in human infants: electrophysiological evidence. , 1981, Science.

[6]  Janette Atkinson,et al.  Cortical binocularity in infants , 1980, Nature.

[7]  R. Held,et al.  Stereoacuity of human infants. , 1980, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  Marvin M. Levy,et al.  Stereopsis and binocular rivalry from dichoptic stereograms , 1978, Vision Research.

[9]  R Held,et al.  Astigmatism in infants. , 1978, Science.

[10]  I Mohindra,et al.  A non-cycloplegic refraction technique for infants and young children. , 1977, Journal of the American Optometric Association.

[11]  R. Aslin.  Development of binocular fixation in human infants. , 1977, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[12]  S. Siegel,et al.  Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences , 2022, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[13]  D. Teller,et al.  Scotopic vision, color vision, and stereopsis in infants. , 1982, Current eye research.

[14]  H. P. Bechtoldt,et al.  Stereopsis in young infants and stereopsis in an infant with congenital esotropia. , 1979, Journal of pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus.

[15]  B. Julesz.  Foundations of Cyclopean Perception , 1971 .