Abstract
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.
Highlights
Several studies on binocular vision in infants have found that most infants have an average stereopsis onset between the ages of 2 and 4 months (Fox et al, 1980; Held et al, 1980; Petrig et al, 1981)
We evaluated the development of binocular rivalry in infants by using continuous flash suppression (CFS, Tsuchiya and Koch, 2005), which does not depend on the spontaneous preference for either the fusible or the rivalrous pattern
A one-sample t-test showed that the infants significantly preferred the dynamic Mondrian patterns over chance level [t(9) = 4.70, p < .01, d = 1.57; a post hoc power analysis showed that the study had above 99% power to detect a significant difference at p < 0.05)
Summary
Several studies on binocular vision in infants have found that most infants have an average stereopsis onset between the ages of 2 and 4 months (Fox et al, 1980; Held et al, 1980; Petrig et al, 1981). These studies suggested that sensitivity to horizontal disparity emerges after 3 months of age Binocular rivalry, another perceptual phenomenon of binocular vision, has been investigated by testing whether the infant can discriminate between fusible and rivalrous stimuli (Birch et al, 1985; Shimojo et al, 1986; Gwiazda et al, 1989; Thorn et al, 1994; Brown and Miracle, 2003; Kavšek, 2013b). The forced-choice preferential looking (FPL) method (e.g., Teller, 1979) was used to examine whether the infants showed a preference for certain stimuli, which is Development of Binocular Suppression regarded as discrimination between the fusible and rivalrous stimuli These studies reveal that the infants looked longer at the fusional stimuli than the rivalrous ones after an average age of 2 months, suggesting that binocular rivalry emerges at a similar period as stereopsis
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