Color vision in the first year of life

Abstract

Behavioral procedures that allow the estimation of sensory or perceptual abilities in infants and children are greatly based on the seminal discovery made in the 1950s by psychologist Robert Fantz that, given the choice, birth infants prefer to look at complex stimuli rather than to gaze at monotonous scenes. Based on the new discovery, the group of scientists led by Davida Teller, at the University of Washington, developed a methodology for psychophysical assessment of vision in babies that allowed a great advancement in the study of development and maturation of several basic visual functions, such as visual acuity, color vision, contrast sensitivity, stereoscopic vision, and vision of movement. The present review examines this literature showing how visual functions are assessed in babies and what has been learnt so far about the capacity to see color by the newborn.