Atkinson J, Hood B, Wattam-Bell J, Anker S, Tricklebank J
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK.
Perception. 1988;17(5):587-95. doi: 10.1068/p170587.
It has previously been found by us, with a visual evoked potential (VEP) measure, that orientation discrimination of dynamic patterns in infants can be demonstrated from around 6 weeks after birth. Experiments are reported in which orientation discrimination was measured behaviourally, in two infant control habituation procedures, with both dynamic and static patterns. When dynamic patterns identical to those in our previous VEP studies were used, the first positive evidence of orientation discrimination was found at around 6 weeks postnatally. The time course of both the VEP and the behavioural measures was similar. However, with static patterns, evidence of orientation discrimination by newborns was found if the infants were allowed to compare the habituated and novel orientations in a paired simultaneous comparison after habituation, but was not found when the habituated and novel stimulus were presented sequentially. The positive evidence of orientation discrimination in newborns supports the hypothesis that some form of orientationally tuned detectors can be used for discrimination of static patterns at birth. However, some developmental change over several weeks seems to be required before a positive electrophysiological VEP response can be measured for dynamic patterns changing in orientation.
我们之前通过视觉诱发电位（VEP）测量发现，出生后约6周起即可证明婴儿对动态图案的方向辨别能力。本文报告了一些实验，在两个婴儿对照习惯化程序中，使用动态和静态图案对方向辨别进行行为测量。当使用与我们之前VEP研究中相同的动态图案时，在出生后约6周发现了方向辨别能力的首个确凿证据。VEP和行为测量的时间进程相似。然而，对于静态图案，如果在习惯化后让婴儿在配对同时比较中比较习惯化和新的方向，则发现新生儿有方向辨别能力的证据，但当习惯化刺激和新刺激依次呈现时则未发现。新生儿方向辨别能力的确凿证据支持了这样一种假设，即某种形式的方向调谐探测器在出生时可用于辨别静态图案。然而，在能够测量到对方向变化的动态图案产生阳性电生理VEP反应之前，似乎需要在几周内发生一些发育变化。
