Meng Qianli, Wang Bo, Cui Ding, Liu Ning, Huang Yan, Chen Lin, Ma Yuanye
State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
J Vis. 2019 Jan 2;19(1):10. doi: 10.1167/19.1.10.
Over the past 40 years, research has addressed the impact of the aging process on various aspects of visual function. Most studies have focused on age-related visual impairment in low-level local features of visual objects, such as orientation, contrast sensitivity and spatial frequency. However, whether there are lifespan changes in global visual perception is still unclear. To suitably frame this question, we defined global visual patterns by a topological approach, and local visual patterns were manipulated with different levels of geometrical invariants in descending order of structural stability from projective, affine, and then Euclidean features. Using the Configural Superiority Effect, we investigated the influence of aging on local and global visual perception through a comparison of young and old adults in Experiment 1; moreover, we provided continuous-aging data from 21 to 78 years of age to investigate age-related changes in visual perception in Experiment 2. We found a large perceptual decline across increasing age groups in local geometrical perception: for example, Euclidean (orientation), affine (parallelism), and projective (collinearity) discrimination. Moreover, the study provides a counterintuitive finding that global topological perception resists the aging process and remains constant throughout adult lifespan. These findings highlight the possibility that for humans, global topology may be a stable and fundamental component by which visual systems represent and characterize objects.
在过去40年里，研究关注了衰老过程对视觉功能各个方面的影响。大多数研究聚焦于视觉对象低层次局部特征方面与年龄相关的视觉损伤，如方向、对比敏感度和空间频率。然而，全局视觉感知是否存在终生变化仍不明确。为了恰当地阐述这个问题，我们通过拓扑方法定义全局视觉模式，并且按照从射影、仿射到欧几里得特征的结构稳定性降序，用不同层次的几何不变量来操纵局部视觉模式。在实验1中，我们通过比较年轻人和老年人，利用构型优势效应研究衰老对局部和全局视觉感知的影响；此外，在实验2中，我们提供了从21岁到78岁的连续衰老数据，以研究视觉感知中与年龄相关的变化。我们发现，在局部几何感知方面，随着年龄组的增加存在显著的感知下降：例如，欧几里得（方向）、仿射（平行性）和射影（共线性）辨别。此外，该研究提供了一个与直觉相反的发现，即全局拓扑感知能抵抗衰老过程，并且在整个成年期保持不变。这些发现凸显了一种可能性，即对于人类而言，全局拓扑可能是视觉系统表征和刻画对象的一个稳定且基本的组成部分。
