| Abstract: | Spatial contrast sensitivity was measured in kittens aged 6, 9, and 12 months and in adult cats. Cats had to open one of two
small windows, which had a photograph of a grid, in order to obtain food reinforcement. The nonreinforced stimulus was a photograph
of a uniform field of the same mean luminance. Visual acuity was constant in kittens aged 6 to 12 months. However, six-month-old
kittens had low contrast sensitivity at low spatial frequencies (<0.6 cycles/degree). At the age of nine months, contrast
sensitivity over this range increased, though the level seen in adult cats was reached only at the age of 12 months. It is
suggested that the increase in contrast sensitivity occurring after the critical developmental period in kittens reflects
maturation of higher-order cortical fields involved in the process of recognition.
Laboratory of Visual Physiology, I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, 6 Makarov Bank, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia. Translated
from Fiziologicheskii Zhurnal imeni I. M. Sechenova, Vol. 82, No. 10-11, pp. 73–76, October–November, 1996. |
