Systematic measurement of human neonatal color vision

doi:10.1016/0042-6989(94)90127-9

Vision Research

Volume 34, Issue 13, July 1994, Pages 1691-1701

https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(94)90127-9 Get rights and content

We used a new time-efficient method to evaluate chromatic-achromatic discrimination in newborn (n = 36) and 1-month-old (n = 34) human infants. Results showed that 74% of newtons discriminated a 10.5 × 17.5 deg broadband red patch from all relative luminances of an achromatic background, but only 14% of newborns did so with a blue, 36% with a green and 25% with a yellow patch. Most infants who “failed” did so at relative luminances very close to the respective photopic luminance match. At 1 month, performance improved somewhat although infants still show clear evidence of discriminating only the red patch. These results, the first to be obtained from individual newborns with a method incorporating a systematic variation of luminance, imply that early color vision is very limited. Possible photoreceptoral and neural bases for these immaturities are discussed.

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The present paper constitutes a review of the literature on young infants’ chromatic discrimination capabilities. A series of early studies showed that infants as young as two months postnatal can make at least some chromatic discriminations between stationary, homogeneous fields of different wavelength compositions. Current studies of spatial and temporal contrast sensitivity functions (CSFs) for red/green isoluminant stimuli suggest that spatial chromatic CSFs show developmental changes in sensitivity and spatial scale, but not curve shape; while temporal chromatic CSFs (tCSFs) show developmental changes in sensitivity and curve shape, but not temporal scale. Infants can also code the direction of motion of moving isoluminant red/green gratings, for both continuous and quadrature motion. The possible mechanisms that underlie infants’ chromatic discriminations are discussed.
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References (23)

Deficiencies in human neonates color vision: Photoreceptoral and neural explanations

Behavioral Brain Research

The influence of stimulus size on newborns' discrimination of chromatic from achromatic stimuli

Vision Research

Newborns' discrimination of chromatic from achromatic stimuli

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Development of contrast sensitivity over the first few months of life in the human infant

Vision Research

Development of visual sensitivity to light and color vision in human infants: A critical review

Vision Research

Spectral sensitivity of the 2-month-old infant as measured by the visually evoked cortical potential

Vision Research

Rayleigh discriminations in young human infants

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Emergence of the ability to discriminate a blue from gray at one month of age

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Infant color vision: The effect of test field size on Rayleigh discriminations

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Discrimination of chromatic from white light by 2-month-old human infants

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Tritan discriminations by 1- and 2-month-old human infants

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Spatial and temporal aspects of infant color vision

Season of birth and morningness: Comparison between the northern and southern hemispheres

Alone in the dark? Modeling the conditions for visual experience in human fetuses

Integration of active vision and reaching from a developmental robotics perspective

Multisensory exploration and object individuation in infancy

New evidence for infant colour categories

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