Abstract
Texture-defined objects are shapes defined by boundaries based on discontinuities along a feature dimension (Nothdurft, 1993). Psychophysical studies in pediatric observers showed that detecting texture discontinuities based on orientation have been found to appear at 4-6 months of age mature in adolescence (Rieth & Sireteanu, 1992). We evaluated the neural correlates of texture-segmentation across development by measuring high-density visual-evoked potentials in typically-developing children and adults. We found that the formation of texture-defined form elicited VEP responses earlier in adults than in children. While there were no sex differences in VEP responses in adults, we found that response amplitudes in girls were much smaller than in boys of the same age. These results suggest that the neural responses in girls were more adult-like than in boys. This presentation will discuss the possible cortical substrate of this sex difference (e.g. Sowell, et al, 2007).