It is often assumed that by the age of 6–7, children’s visual perception has essentially caught up to that of adults. However, according to a new study, children’s visual perception growth does not cease before the age of ten.
The study was published on September 27, 2021, in Child Development and was carried by Dr. Chen Lin’s group from the Chinese Academy of Biosciences’ Institute of Biophysics and Dr. Huang Yan’s team from Shenzhen Institute of Advanced technology.
Topological priority in peripheral vision appears after ten years
Topological property (TP) is a fundamental geometric characteristic of objects that is conserved in one-to-one and across continuous transformations and is thought to be processed in early perception. Notably, topological image distinctions have been found to be extremely sensitive to the human visual system. Moreover, there is a lot of evidence that TP is processed before non-TP aspects of visual stimuli, which is known as the TP priority effect.
The researchers discovered that the global topological primacy in peripheral vision did not appear until around ten years and that central and peripheral vision development changed.
According to evidence, children’s rudimentary visual functions are identical to adults’, but they have not fully matured. For instance, 4-year-old children’s spatial contrast sensitivity follows an adult-like trajectory before reaching adult levels at six to seven years.
Children above 10 showed peripheral and central vision tendency
The researchers contrasted the perceptions of 773 youngsters aged 6 to 14 and 179 adults on global TP. According to the findings, adults and children aged ten and above demonstrated a TP priority tendency in both central and peripheral vision. Children aged 6 to 8 demonstrated a TP priority tendency for central stimuli but a reverse trend in their periphery vision.
The TP discrimination tests gave researchers a unique look at how children’s visual processing develops in the early stages. This research found a substantial difference in topological processing in peripheral vision between children under the age of ten and adults, implying that the global TP in peripheral vision does not arise until the age of ten.
