The Development of Binocular Suppression in Infants

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Jiale Yang¹  So Kanazawa²  Masami K. Yamaguchi³ 

[1] Research and Development Initiative, Chuo University;Department of Psychology, Japan Women’s University;Department of Psychology, Chuo University

关键词: binocular suppression;    infant;    preferential looking paradigm;    visual development;    continuous flash suppression;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.558871

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Little is known about the time of development of binocular suppression. In the present study, we evaluated the emergence of binocular suppression in infants by using continuous flash suppression (CFS, Tsuchiya and Koch, 2005 ). In our experiment, one eye of infants was presented with a static face image at one side of the screen, while another eye was presented with dynamic Mondrian patterns in full screen. Adult observers confirmed that the static face image was consciously repressed by the changing Mondrian patterns. If binocular suppression was functional, the infants would not perceive the face and thus would not show any preference in the experiment. However, if binocular suppression in the infants was not yet acquired, they would perceive the face and the Mondrian patterns at the same time and would thus show preference for the side where the face was presented. The results showed that infants aged 2–3 months, but not those aged 4–5 months, detected the position of the face. Furthermore, this detection was not due to weak contrast sensitivity to the dynamic Mondrian mask. These results indicated that the immature binocular visual system may perceive different images from different eyes simultaneously and that infants may lose this ability after establishing binocular suppression at 4–5 months of age.

【 授权许可】

CC BY