Developmental Changes in the Balance of Disparity, Blur, and Looming/Proximity Cues to Drive Ocular Alignment and Focus

What is it about?

We studied how infants learned to focus from birth. Adults use differences in images viewed by each eye (binocular disparity) as the main way to drive focusing. In the first weeks, however, looming and size cues are the most important for infants. Between 12 and 26 weeks of age babies use blur, disparity and looming fairly equally, but by 5 years of age blur and looming cues are less influential as disparity cues predominate.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

If this typical developmental progression of visual cue weighting is disrupted, it might explain many clinical characteristics of children's eye problems such as strabismus.