Abstract
Introduction. Deficits in motion perception in developmental disorders are commonly attributed to vulnerability in the dorsal visual stream. This attribution is supported by associations between global motion perception and visuomotor skills in preschool children, both typically-developing and those at risk for abnormal neurodevelopment. Our study compared the typical maturation of hand-eye coordination and motion-defined form discrimination, an aspect of motion perception that is deficient in developmental disorders but that has been linked to both ventral and dorsal streams, in a large group of school-aged children. Methods. We assessed 204 children, age 4 to 16 years, in a public science museum setting. Binocular motion coherence thresholds for discriminating the orientation of computer-generated motion-defined rectangles (vertical or horizontal) were measured with a 2-alternative forced-choice staircase procedure. Hand-eye coordination was measured with a pen and paper circle-marking task; the number of circles accurately marked in 20s was determined. Results. Performance on both tasks was similar to that observed in controlled laboratory settings. Motion-defined form perception improved from 4 to 11 years of age, and performance on the circle-marking task improved until 12 years of age. Although motion coherence thresholds were significantly correlated with the number of circles marked, further analyses revealed that this relationship was driven by improvement in performance with age. Conclusion. We did not find an association between the maturation of motion-defined form perception and a measure of fine hand-eye coordination in typically-developing children. These aspects of vision were chosen because they are known to mature relatively late in development, and to be disrupted by conditions such as amblyopia that interfere with binocular vision. We are currently assessing additional measures of visuomotor performance.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018