Visual Perception Development Essay, Research Paper

Devlopment of Visual Perception

The development of visual perception changes through the caurse of life time from birth through adulthood. Sight is produced by taking ?stimulation in the form of light and converting it to electrochemical signals to the brain.? Most of the development of visual perception takes place in infants and then declines in old age.

In Young infants is when visual perception begins to grow and develop. A new born can see changes in brightness and is able to see the world in color. Earlier diserves believed new borns could only see in black and white. At four months babies seem to discriminate between colors where as a new born can see color but unable to discrimninate between differences. Babies prefer objects with a pattern as opposed to a blank object. Taking this knowledge observes came up with a way of mearuring babies eyesight by presenting a pair of disks with a pattern and gradually increasing the fine-grained stip disk to find the point where the baby cannot tell the difference between a pattern and a blank disk. The observes found that newborns can have as poor of an eyesight as 20/600 wich means object that adults can see 600 feet away a newborn can see only 20 feet away. Objects to infants are blurry that are more than eight inches from their face unless the object is bold and has an extreme light/dark contrast (Singelman 145). Altgought babies are unable to discrminate between color, they can discriminate between different patterns. Robert Fantz, during the ealry 1960?s, found that babies less than two days old can differenciate visual forms. Babies being attracted to visual forms show to take great interenst in the patterns in the human face. Young infants are also attracted to moving objects. Even though infants tracking of moving objects has not matured yet and moving things can be lost unless its moving very slow a moving object is more apt to gain a babies attention than a stationary object. Infants prefer moderate complex patterns than high complex patterns where they are unable to make out all the detail (Singlman 146). Another important factor in visual perception is depth perception. Depth perception involves perceiving depth and knowing when objects are near or far away. Infants have some abilitly to interpet special cues involving nearby objecs. They are able to recognixe objects of the same size at different distances. In a tudy of visual cliff, babies of croling age were tested to see if they could sence the drop off. Twenty seven out of thirtysix would cross the shallow end, while only three out of the thirty six would cross the deep end to reach Mommy. To test infants too young to crawlthey were lowered in to the shallow end and then into the deep end. To test fear they heart rte was monitored. It showed that a babies heart rate was slower when lowered into the deep end as oppose to the shallow end. Though fear causes the heart rate to speed up, slower heart rate shows interest. Infants have not learned to fear fallen cause they have not experienced it but they were able to tell the difference in depth of were the ground is (Singleman 146). Most of the development of visual perception happens in infantcy but grow stronger through childhood and adolescents.

Since most of the development of visual perception happenps in infancy, growth on visual perception happens through childhood and adolesants. School age children attention span has increased to where they are able to find a visual simulus and screen out distractions. This age group become able to carry out systematic percetuals searches. They are more able to notice more and more detail the older the child becomes (Singleman 157). When a child reaches adolsents the abilities of childhood grow stronger. Adolestants are able to concertatrate longer and more apt to explore more complex patterens (Singleman 159). Though there?s not much to report on the development of visual perception in children and adolsents, adulthood is where is raches it?s peak and steady begins to decline.

Adults reach their peak of visual perception in their twenty?s then it steadly begins to decline with middle age to old age. The pupil of an old person is smaller than those of a young adult. The change happens gradual and cannot be noticed until they reach their forties. Along with the pupil getting smaller the eyes color starts to fade and the white begins turning yellow. Older adults have difficulty with glare from bright light and also cannot make out things clearly in the dark. Adluts even those with good eyesight have problems precieving moving obects they also have a smaller visual field as they grow in age. Older adults are more adapt to diffent kinds of eye dieases that causes difficulties in visual perception such as blindness (Singleman 161).

I have many experciances to viewing different age groups and can sence the different stages in devolopement of visual perception. Last fall I would babysit daily a five month old who I have been close to since his birth. Through the different stages of infantcy I was able to notice that as he got older he was able to see clearier and his depth percetion would increase. By the time I would watch him he could follow objects that were moving and after while his grabs and misses would become more accurate. He was attracted to toys that have bright colors of diffents shades and patterent. He love toys that would move such as a ball or anything that spined when he touched he. He would play and stare at it longer than any of his other toys that remained stationary. Teaching Sunday school for different age group preschool to sixth grade pictures and patterns in the books and what they drew were more complex and detail in the older grade than those of my preschoolers. Noticing my parents who are in their late forties early fifties I can see their decline of eyesight. They make trips up to Walmart to purchase reading glasses. My dad who always seemed to have good eyesight is beginning to skint his eyes to ready the paper.