The development of contour processing:evidence from physiology and psychophysics

Taylor, Gemma and Hipp, Daniel and Moser, Alecia and Dickerson, Kelly and Gerhardstein, Peter (2014) The development of contour processing:evidence from physiology and psychophysics. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. ISSN 1664-1078

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Abstract

Object perception and pattern vision depend fundamentally upon the extraction of contours from the visual environment. In adulthood, contour or edge-level processing is supported by the Gestalt heuristics of proximity, collinearity, and closure. Less is known, however, about the developmental trajectory of contour detection and contour integration. Within the physiology of the visual system, long-range horizontal connections in V1 and V2 are the likely candidates for implementing these heuristics. While post-mortem anatomical studies of human infants suggest that horizontal interconnections reach maturity by the second year of life, psychophysical research with infants and children suggests a considerably more protracted development. In the present review, data from infancy to adulthood will be discussed in order to track the development of contour detection and integration. The goal of this review is thus to integrate the development of contour detection and integration with research regarding the development of underlying neural circuitry. We conclude that the ontogeny of this system is best characterized as a developmentally extended period of associative acquisition whereby horizontal connectivity becomes functional over longer and longer distances, thus becoming able to effectively integrate over greater spans of visual space.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Frontiers in Psychology
Additional Information:
Copyright © 2014 Taylor, Hipp, Moser, Dickerson and Gerhardstein. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200
Subjects:
?? CONTOUR DETECTIONCLOSUREHORIZONTAL CONNECTINS DEVELOPMENTVISUAL DEVELOPMENTPSYCHOLOGY(ALL) ??
ID Code:
71120
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
06 Oct 2014 13:45
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
17 Sep 2023 01:34