Motion processing asymmetries and stereopsis in infants

These experiments used forced-choice preferential looking to test infants for preferences between pairs of random-dot patterns that moved in opposite directions. With monocularly-viewed horizontally moving patterns, 6-12-week-old infants showed a preference for nasalwards motion. With binocularly-viewed vertical motion, there was no overall preference, but the results did show a significant correlation between upwards bias of OKN and preference for downwards motion. In a longitudinal experiment, the nasalwards preference first appeared at 7-8 weeks, and thereafter persisted until the end of testing (23-25 weeks). In this experiment the infants were also tested for stereopsis, under conditions that were as nearly as possible identical to the direction preference test. There was no evidence that the onset of stereopsis had any effect on the directional asymmetry. The directional asymmetries revealed by these experiments appear to be distinct from the asymmetries of OKN and motion VEPs. It is possible that they reflect asymmetrical directional responses in extrastriate visual cortex (e.g. area V5/MT). (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.