Brown A M, Lindsey D T, McSweeney E M, Walters M M
College of Optometry, Ohio State University, Columbus 43240-1210, USA.
Vision Res. 1995 Nov;35(22):3145-60. doi: 10.1016/0042-6989(95)00017-t.
Infant color vision is poor, and most psychophysical experiments agree that infant color vision emerges between ages 3 weeks and 3 months. Presumably, the color vision of infants is poor during the months immediately after it has emerged. We have tested two alternative explanations for the poor color vision of infants: (1) there is a special critical immaturity within the color pathways of infants; (2) infants have poor infant color vision because they are insensitive to contrast. Luminance and chromatic contrast thresholds were measured on 3-month-olds using optokinetic nystagmus (OKN), and adult luminance and chromatic contrast thresholds were measured using OKN and two forced-choice methods: direction-of-motion discrimination and grating detection. The infant chromatic-to-luminance contrast threshold ratio shows that infants are as sensitive or even more sensitive than adults to color, depending on the testing method used on adults. This result suggests that the general contrast insensitivity hypothesis is correct. Conservative "worst-case" quantitative analysis strongly suggests that this result is not the consequence of a luminance artifact.
婴儿的色觉较差，大多数心理物理学实验都认为婴儿的色觉在3周龄至3月龄之间出现。据推测，婴儿的色觉在刚出现后的几个月里较差。我们测试了对婴儿色觉较差的两种不同解释：（1）婴儿的颜色通路存在特殊的关键发育不成熟；（2）婴儿色觉较差是因为他们对对比度不敏感。使用视动性眼震（OKN）测量了3月龄婴儿的亮度和色度对比度阈值，使用OKN以及两种迫选方法（运动方向辨别和光栅检测）测量了成人的亮度和色度对比度阈值。婴儿的色度与亮度对比度阈值比表明，根据对成人使用的测试方法，婴儿对颜色的敏感度与成人相同甚至更高。这一结果表明，一般对比度不敏感假说正确。保守的“最坏情况”定量分析有力地表明，这一结果不是亮度伪影造成的。
