ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s there has been enormous progress in understanding structurefunction links between visual behaviour and brain systems, but we are still relatively naïve in understanding these links in human development. There are three major reasons for this: One is the dynamic nature of development itself, with constraints in plasticity changing at different levels of the nervous system and each stage building on the preceding state of the system. The second is the paucity of information on human brain structures during development. The third is the fragmentation of approaches in looking at visual development. A synthesis drawing on psychology, paediatric neurology, neurophysiology, and ophthalmology is needed. In this chapter we attempt to bring together work on non-human species and human neuropsychology with current knowledge of human development. Our focus is visual development over the first years of life, although the plasticity shown in the adult brain can be revealing about the same processes. For example, visual neglect can be reduced in stroke patients through movements of the contralateral limb (Halligan & Marshall, 1989; Robertson & North, 1993). This example serves to highlight the close connections between visual and motor development. In studying development, we no longer find it helpful, experimentally or theoretically, to separate visual perception from visuocognitive components (including attention), or from visual control of the eyes, head, limbs, and body. Brain function does not neatly divide up into boxes called “visual perception”, “spatial cognition”, or “visuomotor coordination”, and neither does development.
