According to current accounts of social cognition, the emergence of verbal and non-verbal components of social perception might rely on the acquisition of different cognitive abilities. These components might be differently sensitive to the pattern of neuropsychological impairments in congenital neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, we explored the…

Difficulties in person recognition are among the common complaints associated with cognitive ageing. The present series of experiments therefore investigated face and person recognition in young and older adults. The authors examined how within-domain and cross-domain repetition as well as semantic priming affect familiar face recognition and…

It is generally assumed that children with intellectual disabilities (ID) have an increased risk of impaired visual information processing due to brain damage or brain development disorder. So far little evidence has been presented to support this assumption. Abnormal visual orienting behavior is a sensitive tool to evaluate impaired visual…

Crowding refers to impaired target recognition caused by surrounding contours. We investigated the development of crowding in central vision by comparing single-letter and crowding thresholds in groups of 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and adults. The task was to discriminate the orientation of a Sloan letter E. Single-letter thresholds,…

Many studies report chronic deficits in visual processing in children born preterm. We investigated whether functional abnormalities in visual processing exist in children born preterm but without major neuromotor impairment (i.e. cerebral palsy). Twelve such children (less than 33 weeks gestation or birthweight less than 1000 g) without major…

Damage to the areas of the brain that are responsible for higher visual processing can lead to severe cerebral visual impairment (CVI). The prognosis for higher cognitive visual functions in children with CVI is not well described. We therefore present our six-year follow-up of a boy with CVI and highlight intervention approaches that have proved…

This article provides a terminological framework to show the relationships among different types of visual deficits. It distinguishes between visual functions, which describe how the eye and the lower visual system function, and functional vision, which describes how a person functions. When visual functions are disturbed, the term "visual…

Optic neuropathy is common in mitochondrial disorders, but poorly characterized in Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA), a recessive condition caused by lack of the mitochondrial protein frataxin. We investigated 26 molecularly confirmed FRDA patients by studying both anterior and posterior sections of the visual pathway using a new, integrated approach.…

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of vision loss in Americans aged 60 and older. The loss of central vision from AMD can decrease visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, glare sensitivity, color discrimination, and the ability to adapt to changes in lighting conditions. Older adults with vision loss often have other chronic,…

Aim: Cognitive visual dysfunctions (CVDs) reflect an impairment of the capacity to process visual information. The question of whether CVDs might be classifiable according to the nature and distribution of the underlying brain damage is an intriguing one in child neuropsychology. Method: We studied 22 children born preterm (12 males, 10 females;…

Vision is the dominant sense, and the eyes are connected with almost every other part of the brain. If the vision system is poorly developed, children trying to learn suffer. Without good up close vision, students are handicapped even if no one knows or suspects it--they may not even know it themselves. Students do not know that the way they see…

It has been discovered recently that monocular deprivation in young adult mice induces ocular dominance plasticity (ODP). This contradicts the traditional belief that ODP is restricted to a juvenile critical period. However, questions remain. ODP of young adults has been observed only using methods that are indirectly related to vision, and the…

During a longitudinal in-depth study of the reading acquisition and cognitive and visual development of four children with cerebral visual impairment, the children's visual acuity improved, but their full-scale IQs declined, mostly because of difficulties in abstract thinking, visual cognitive organization, and extremely low processing speed. The…