Visual Experience

Question 1

How is visual acuity at birth?

Answer 1

20/800.

Question 2

How do preferential looking tasks work?

Answer 2

Infants prefer to look ya more complex or novel images and the direction of their gaze can be recorded.

Question 3

How does habituation work?

Answer 3

Infants look less at familiar than novel objects and the duration and frequency of their looking can be recorded.

Question 4

What does habituation test?

Answer 4

Ability to recognise and remember.

Question 5

Give an advantage of the visual cliff paradigm.

Answer 5

It is quite natural.

Question 6

Give 2 disadvantages of the visual cliff paradigm.

Answer 6

It is not well constrained and can only use infants who can crawl, so innateness is questionable.

Question 7

What do Zanker we al (1992) suggest about the different improvement rate of infants at vernier and grating acuity?

Answer 7

Different mechanisms are used for these different tasks and there is a role of experience.

Question 8

At 2 weeks, infants prefer an image of the (contrast/features) of a face.

Answer 8

Contrast.

Question 9

At 6 weeks, infants prefer an image of the (contrast/features) of a face.

Answer 9

Features.

Question 10

Infants younger than 3 months olds are (better/worse) than adults at discriminating sheep and monkey faces.

Answer 10

Better.

Question 11

Briefly describe amblyopia.

Answer 11

Poor visual acuity and other deficits that cannot be improved with optical correction.

Question 12

Why is amblyopia often linked to an imbalance between the eyes?

Answer 12

If one eye is better than the other, people tend to suppress the input from their ‘bad’ eye.

Question 13

How did a more recent study suggest that infants cannot consistently imitate?

Answer 13

By measuring the probability of infants making the same facial action as 10 other actions in a fixed time, revealing that they do certain things no matter what they are shown.

Question 14

Provide evidence for a role of experience in face processing.

Answer 14

Infants looked at female faces 64% more, but 59% of infants with a male primary caregiver preferred male faces.

Question 14

What is the critical period for normal development of vision?

Answer 14

The first few years of life.

Question 15

Give 2 reasons why there must be a role for visual experience in visual development.

Answer 15

To deal with physical changes and to tube to the local environment and calibrate.

Question 17

What is essential for cells with binocular receptive fields to develop?

Answer 17

Both eyes must be open during development.

Question 18

What does even a few hours in a ‘vertical’ rearing environment do?

Answer 18

Biases V1 cell orientation tuning.

Question 19

What is a common treatment for amblyopia?

Answer 19

Patching of the unaffected eye during the critical period before age 7.

Question 20

What abilities are present when people recover from blindness?

Answer 20

Figure (ground segregation and colour), shape from shading and motion perception.

Question 21

What abilities are absent when people recover from blindness?

Answer 21

Depth, perspective, illusory contours and contour integration.

Question 22

Give 3 problems in interpretation of studies on recovery from blindness.

Answer 22

Experience before blindness is untested, adults knowledge is used in interpreting vision and degeneration of the visual system is not accounted for.

Question 23

Define perceptual learning.

Answer 23

A change of perception as a result of experience.

Question 24

What is stimulus onset asynchrony?

Answer 24

The time different between the appearance of a mask and a target.

Question 25

Why is investigating transfer of perceptual learning important?

Answer 25

If learning does transfer, this could be important for vision treatment and whether or not transfer occurs suggests where learning is occurring and the neural correlates of learning.

Question 26

(Specificity/transfer) of perceptual learning suggests early cortical processing.

Answer 26

Specificity.

Question 27

(Specificity/transfer) of perceptual learning suggests higher level processing.

Answer 27

Transfer.

Question 28

In what type of task can amblyopia show a broader range of improvement than controls?

Answer 28

Contrast sensitivity.

Question 29

Summarise the findings of a video game and amblyopia cross over study.

Answer 29

All games improved several function, such as acuity, (but particularly action games) and the occlusion path had no effect.