Kimberly Meier

The maturation of global motion perception depends on the spatial and temporal offsets of the stimulus

The typical development of motion perception is commonly assessed with tests of global motion integration using random dot kinematograms. There are discrepancies, however, with respect to when typically-developing children reach adult-like performance on this task, ranging from as early as 3 years to as late as 12 years. To address these discrepancies, the current study measured the effect of frame duration (Δt) and signal dot spatial offset (Δx) on motion coherence thresholds in adults and children. Two Δt values were used in combination with seven Δx values, for a range of speeds (0.3-38 deg/s). Developmental comparisons showed that for the longer Δt, children performed as well as adults for larger Δx, and were immature for smaller Δx. When parameters were expressed as speed, there was a range of intermediate speeds (4-12 deg/s) for which maturity was dependent on the values of Δx and Δt tested. These results resolve previous discrepancies by showing that motion sensitivity to a given speed may be mature, or not, depending on the underlying spatial and temporal properties of the motion stimulus.

Global motion perception in children with amblyopia as a function of spatial and temporal stimulus parameters.

Global motion sensitivity in typically developing children depends on the spatial (Δx) and temporal (Δt) displacement parameters of the motion stimulus. Specifically, sensitivity for small Δx values matures at a later age, suggesting it may be the most vulnerable to damage by amblyopia. To explore this possibility, we compared motion coherence thresholds of children with amblyopia (7-14years old) to age-matched controls. Three Δx values were used with two Δt values, yielding six conditions covering a range of speeds (0.3-30deg/s). We predicted children with amblyopia would show normal coherence thresholds for the same parameters on which 5-year-olds previously demonstrated mature performance, and elevated coherence thresholds for parameters on which 5-year-olds demonstrated immaturities. Consistent with this, we found that children with amblyopia showed deficits with amblyopic eye viewing compared to controls for small and medium Δx values, regardless of Δt value. The fellow eye showed similar results at the smaller Δt. These results confirm that global motion perception in children with amblyopia is particularly deficient at the finer spatial scales that typically mature later in development. An additional implication is that carefully designed stimuli that are adequately sensitive must be used to assess global motion function in developmental disorders. Stimulus parameters for which performance matures early in life may not reveal global motion perception deficits.

The effect of occlusion therapy on motion perception deficits in amblyopia

There is growing evidence for deficits in motion perception in amblyopia, but these are rarely assessed clinically. In this prospective study we examined the effect of occlusion therapy on motion-defined form perception and multiple-object tracking. Participants included children (3-10years old) with unilateral anisometropic and/or strabismic amblyopia who were currently undergoing occlusion therapy and age-matched control children with normal vision. At the start of the study, deficits in motion-defined form perception were present in at least one eye in 69% of the children with amblyopia. These deficits were still present at the end of the study in 55% of the amblyopia group. For multiple-object tracking, deficits were present initially in 64% and finally in 55% of the children with amblyopia, even after completion of occlusion therapy. Many of these deficits persisted in spite of an improvement in amblyopic eye visual acuity in response to occlusion therapy. The prevalence of motion perception deficits in amblyopia as well as their resistance to occlusion therapy, support the need for new approaches to amblyopia treatment.

Unilateral Amblyopia Affects Two Eyes: Fellow Eye Deficits in Amblyopia

Unilateral amblyopia is a visual disorder that arises after selective disruption of visual input to one eye during critical periods of development. In the clinic, amblyopia is understood as poor visual acuity in an eye that was deprived of pattern vision early in life. By its nature, however, amblyopia has an adverse effect on the development of a binocular visual system and the interactions between signals from two eyes. Visual functions aside from visual acuity are impacted, and many studies have indicated compromised sensitivity in the fellow eye even though it demonstrates normal visual acuity. While these fellow eye deficits have been noted, no overarching theory has been proposed to describe why and under what conditions the fellow eye is impacted by amblyopia. Here, we consider four explanations that may account for decreased fellow eye sensitivity: the fellow eye is adversely impacted by treatment for amblyopia; the maturation of the fellow eye is delayed by amblyopia; fellow eye sensitivity is impacted for visual functions that rely on binocular cortex; and fellow eye deficits reflect an adaptive mechanism that works to equalize the sensitivity of the two eyes. To evaluate these ideas, we describe five visual functions that are commonly reported to be deficient in the amblyopic eye (hyperacuity, contrast sensitivity, spatial integration, global motion, and motion-defined form), and unify the current evidence for fellow eye deficits. Further research targeted at exploring fellow eye deficits in amblyopia will provide us with a broader understanding of normal visual development and how amblyopia impacts the developing visual system.

Temporal characteristics of overt attentional behavior during category learning

Many theories of category learning incorporate mechanisms for selective attention, typically implemented as attention weights that change on a trial-by-trial basis. This is because there is relatively little data on within-trial changes in attention. We used eye tracking and mouse tracking as fine-grained measures of attention in three complex visual categorization tasks to investigate temporal patterns in overt attentional behavior within individual categorization decisions. In Experiments 1 and 2, we recorded participants’ eye movements while they performed three different categorization tasks. We extended previous research by demonstrating that not only are participants less likely to fixate irrelevant features, but also, when they do, these fixations are shorter than fixations to relevant features. We also found that participants’ fixation patterns show increasingly consistent temporal patterns. Participants were faster, although no more accurate, when their fixation sequences followed a consistent temporal structure. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings in a task where participants used mouse movements to uncover features. Overall, we showed that there are important temporal regularities in information sampling during category learning that cannot be accounted for by existing models. These can be used to supplement extant models for richer predictions of how information is attended to during the buildup to a categorization decision.

Learning-Induced Changes in Attentional Allocation during Categorization: A Sizable Catalog of Attention Change as Measured by Eye Movements

Learning how to allocate attention properly is essential for success at many categorization tasks. Advances in our understanding of learned attention are stymied by a chicken-and-egg problem: there are no theoretical accounts of learned attention that predict patterns of eye movements, making data collection difficult to justify, and there are not enough datasets to support the development of a rich theory of learned attention. The present work addresses this by reporting five measures relating to the overt allocation of attention across 10 category learning experiments: accuracy, probability of fixating irrelevant information, number of fixations to category features, the amount of change in the allocation of attention (using a new measure called Time Proportion Shift - TIPS), and a measure of the relationship between attention change and erroneous responses. Using these measures, the data suggest that eye-movements are not substantially connected to error in most cases and that aggregate trial-by-trial attention change is generally stable across a number of changing task variables. The data presented here provide a target for computational models that aim to account for changes in overt attentional behaviors across learning.

Effect of spatial and temporal stimulus parameters on the maturation of global motion perception

ABSTRACT There are discrepancies with respect to the age at which adult‐like performance is reached on tasks assessing global motion perception. This is in part because performance in children depends on stimulus parameters. We recently showed that five‐year‐olds demonstrated adult‐like performance over a range of speeds when the speed ratio was comprised of longer spatial and temporal displacements; but displayed immature performance when the speed ratio was comprised of shorter displacements. The goal of the current study was to assess the effect of these global motion stimulus parameters across a broader age range in order to estimate the age at which mature performance is reached. Motion coherence thresholds were assessed in 182 children and adults aged 7–30 years. Dot displacement (&Dgr;x) was 1, 5, or 30 min of arc; frame duration (&Dgr;t) was 17 or 50 ms. This created a total of six conditions. Consistent with our previous results, coherence thresholds in the youngest children assessed were adult‐like at the two conditions with the largest &Dgr;x. Maturity was reached around age 12 for the medium &Dgr;x, and by age 16 for the smallest &Dgr;x. Performance did not appear to be affected by &Dgr;t. This late maturation may reflect a long developmental period for cortical networks underlying global motion perception. These findings resolve many of the discrepancies across previous studies, and should be considered when using global motion tasks to assess children with atypical development.

Global motion perception deficits in children with amblyopia as a function of spatial and temporal stimulus parameters

INTRODUCTION There are conflicting results on whether children with amblyopia have deficits in global motion perception. Differences in the stimulus parameters used in different studies may have led to these discrepancies. Specifically, the speed of a global motion stimulus can be broken down into a ratio of spatial (∆x) and temporal (∆t) displacement parameters. We have shown that coherence thresholds for global motion direction discrimination are immature in 4-6 year olds when smaller ∆x/∆t values are used to create the speed, but adult-like when larger values are used (Meier & Giaschi, 2014). We hypothesize that coherence thresholds in children with amblyopia will be elevated for parameters that take longer to mature, and similar to controls for parameters that mature earlier. METHODS Coherence thresholds were assessed in children with amblyopia (7--16 years, M = 11.21) and age-matched controls using a two-alternative forced choice direction discrimination task. Six combinations of spatial and temporal parameters were used: spatial displacement (∆x) was 1, 5, or 30 arc min; temporal displacement (∆t) was 17 or 50 ms. Children were assessed monocularly, and conducted one run per eye, for a total of 12 measurements. RESULTS Children with amblyopia had elevated coherence thresholds in the amblyopic eye for ∆x = 1 and 5 arc min, but not ∆x = 30 arc min, at both ∆t = 17 and 50 ms. There was a similar trend in the fellow eye at ∆t = 17 ms, ∆x = 1 arc min. CONCLUSION Children with amblyopia show deficits in global motion perception in each eye when they are tested with stimuli that use shorter spatial displacements, regardless of temporal displacement. This is consistent with the hypothesis that aspects of motion perception that take longer to mature are more susceptible to damage by amblyopia. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.

Neural Correlates of Speed-Tuned Motion Perception in Healthy Adults:

It has been suggested that slow and medium-to-fast speeds of motion may be processed by at least partially separate mechanisms. The purpose of this study was to establish the cortical areas activated during motion-defined form and global motion tasks as a function of speed, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants performed discrimination tasks with random dot stimuli at high coherence, at coherence near their own thresholds, and for random motion. Stimuli were moving at 0.1 or 5 deg/s. In the motion-defined form task, lateral occipital complex, V5/MT+ and intraparietal sulcus showed greater activation by high or near-threshold coherence than by random motion stimuli; V5/MT+ and intraparietal sulcus demonstrated greater activation for 5 than 0.1 deg/s dot motion. In the global motion task, only high coherence stimuli elicited significant activation over random motion; this activation was primarily in nonclassical motion areas. V5/MT+ was active for all motion conditions and showed similar activation for coherent and random motion. No regions demonstrated speed-tuning effects for global motion. These results suggest that similar cortical systems are activated by slow- and medium-speed stimuli during these tasks in healthy adults.