Abstract
In the last two decades, the range of research on visual development has been expanded by new methodologies, some represented in this symposium, which provide richer data and more direct insights into the visual brain mechanisms underlying development. This talk provides a brief overview of other advances which have started to answer some key questions in visual development: (i) application of eye tracking to automated visual assessment; (ii) head-mounted eye tracking yielding data on how infants sample their natural visual environment; (iii) frequency-tagging to refine the specificity of information yielded by EEG; (iv) MRI approaches to the connectivity and structure of the developing visual brain, including individual differences in development; (v) broader studies of the impact of visual deprivation on human visual development. As well as applying new methods, developmental research, in common with vision research more generally, has also extended its scope into the interfaces of vision with attention, action systems, decision processes, and other aspects of cognition. All these advances open the prospects of a wider and deeper understanding of the role of vision in the development of brain systems in infancy and childhood. However, there remain challenges in understanding the origins of individual differences across children in visuospatial, visuomotor, and visuosocial cognition.