The Postnatal Growth of Visual Capacity

BRONSON, GOnDON. The Postnatal Growth of Visual Capacity. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 873-890. Behavioral studies of early visual development are interpreted within a framework provided by data from the neurosciences. It is concluded that the visual responses elicited during the first month of life are mediated directly by components of a phylogenetically older visual system, and that the more sophisticated reactions that typically begin to appear during the second and third months reflect a dawning participation of the primary visual system in the processing of visual input. The process of postnatal visual development is viewed as a progressive encoding, within different components of the visual network, of increasingly more complex aspects of the information contained in the visual signal.