Visual Impairments (VIs) are ranked as the fourth most common disability in the United States and are viewed as the most common restricting condition during childhood. It has been reported that 17% to 25% of school-aged children have some degree of a vision problem, thus interrupting their potential to reach optimal growth and learning in school.…

We examined 6-month-olds' abilities to represent occluded objects, using a corneal-reflection eye-tracking technique. Experiment 1 compared infants' ability to extrapolate the current pre-occlusion trajectory with their ability to base predictions on recent experiences of novel object motions. In the first condition infants performed at asymptote…

Twelve- and 14-month-old infants' ability to represent another person's visual perspective (Level-1 visual perspective taking) was studied in a looking-time paradigm. Fourteen-month-olds looked longer at a person reaching for and grasping a new object when the old goal-object was visible than when it was invisible to the person (but visible to the…

Three experiments are reported in which 15 babies were presented with visual stimuli which varied in shape and distance from the eye. Results indicated that the majority of subjects binocularly fixated all three stimuli and it was concluded that the newborn baby has the basic requirements for binocular vision. (Author/GO)

Habituated 180 neonates to white lights of varying luminance and tested for recovery of habituation to green, yellow, or red lights varying in excitation purity. Found that newborns discriminated chromatic stimuli from white only when excitation purity exceeded levels much higher than those for adults. Results reinforce view that neonates' vision…

Visual object processing in infancy is often described as proceeding from an early stage in which object features are processed independently to a later stage in which relations between features are taken into account (e.g., Cohen, 1998). Here we present the Representational Acuity Hypothesis, which argues that this behavioral shift can be…

This study evaluated the Columbus (Ohio) Children's Hospital vision stimulation program, involving in-home intervention with 15 visually impaired infants. Comparison with controls indicated benefits of appropriate vision stimulation in increasing the neural foundation for vision and visual-motor function in visually impaired infants. (Author/DB)

This paper reports a study which investigated 2-month-old infants' auditory discrimination of tone quality in the male voice, extending a previous study which found that voice quality changes (soft versus harsh) in a female voice were discriminable by infants at this age. Subjects were 20 infants, tested at 8 and 9 weeks of age. Each infant was…

Studied infant ability to extract depth information from a three-dimensional structure. Found evidence that 8-month-old infants distinguished between lines indicating edges, and lines indicating markings, and that they are able to use line junctions to perceive line drawings as depicting three-dimensional objects in the picture plane. (Author)

Specific and understandable suggestions are offered to parents of severely visually impaired children who have or may have the capacity to learn visually. Parents can assist children with even a small amount of vision to develop that vision from an early age. Vision development begins by ensuring that the child receives appropriate medical and…

Intended for parents, the manual contains suggestions for play and games with visually impaired children. Parents are advised to tell the children what they are doing and using while engaged in activities, to increase their knowledge of the world and of themselves. Ideas span eight areas: body awareness (touching body parts while naming them);…