Infant peripheral vision: The development of monocular visual acuity in the first 3 months of postnatal life

Quantitative data on the early morphological development of the human retina show that the peripheral region is relatively more mature than the central region. These results have stimulated researchers to compare the development of visual functions in the central and peripheral regions of the visual field. Here, we used preferential looking to evaluate 1-, 2- and 3-month-old infants' central and peripheral (10 degrees and 30 degrees) monocular visual acuity. There were three findings: (i) both central and peripheral acuities were poor at 1 month, improved over the age range tested, but were still about 3 octaves worse than adults' acuity; (ii) at all ages monocular acuity decreased with increasing eccentricity; (iii) 2- and 3-month-olds showed higher acuity for gratings in the temporal than in the nasal visual field at 30 degrees. The implications of these results for issues in visual development are discussed.