How Top-down Influences Shape Visual Development from Infancy to Childhood

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

How do infants and children perceive the world? And how does this shift with development? Visual perception is a dynamic process modulated by both bottom-up (e.g., saliency of sensory inputs) and top-down factors (e.g., experience, attention, learning). However, given that infants and children have less experience relative to adults, and ongoing brain development—functionally and anatomically—it is likely that infants and children rely more heavily on bottom cues when perceiving their visual environments.
Challenging this perspective, recent findings have shown that the top-down contribution exists at a young age and may shape visual development. This symposium seeks to understand how top-down mechanisms impact visual development from infancy to childhood, with diverse methodologies including eye-tracking, fNIRS, EEG, and fMRI.
Paper 1 demonstrates that the top-down influences impact motion and face perception in infants, and the frontal lobe is the origin of the top-down signals. Paper 2 demonstrates that a brief learning of object labels can modulate the cortical responses to objects in the infant visual cortex. Paper 3 shows that experiences shape hemispheric organization of the visual cortex, focusing on faces and words. Paper 4 expands the scope to address potential developmental changes in the top-down mechanisms. This study shows that unlike in the adult visual cortex, which can prioritize task-relevant information, attentional demands do not alter neural representation in the child visual cortex. Together, studies in this symposium reveal that top-down influences are one of the core mechanisms that drive visual development in infancy and childhood.

Sub Unit

• Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Chairs

• Yaelan Jung, Princeton University

• Amy S Finn, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• Top-down Factors Shape Infant Vision: Neural and Behavioral Evidence - Presenting Author: Lauren L. Emberson, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Sori Baek, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Sagi Jaffe-Dax, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Fernanda Fernandez; Non-Presenting Author: Anna Herbolzheimer, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Naiqi G Xiao, McMaster University

• The Top-down Influence of Object Labels on Infant Steady State Visual Evoked Potentials (ssVEPs) - Presenting Author: Ethan Kutlu, University of Iowa; Non-Presenting Author: Zoe Pestana, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Ryan Barry-Anwar, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Andreas Keil, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Lisa S Scott, University of Florida

• The Emergence of Hemispheric Organization: The case of faces and words - Presenting Author: Marlene Behrmann, Carnegie Mellon University

• Top-down Modulation of Visual Cortex in the Developing Human Brain - Presenting Author: Yaelan Jung, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Tess Allegra Forest, University of Toronto; Non-Presenting Author: Dirk B. Walther, University of Toronto; Non-Presenting Author: Amy S Finn, University of Toronto