Late maturation of visual spatial integration in humans

Visual development is thought to be completed at an early age. We suggest t hat the maturation of the visual brain is not homogeneous: functions with g reater need for early availability, such as visuomotor control, mature earl ier, and the development of other visual functions may extend well into chi ldhood. We found significant improvement in children between 5 and 14 years in Visual spatial integration by using a contour-detection task. The data show that long-range spatial interactions-subserving the integration of ori entational information across the visual field-span a shorter spatial range in children than in adults. performance in the task improves in a cue-spec ific manner with practice, which indicates the participation of fairly low- level perceptual mechanisms. We interpret our findings in terms of a protra cted development of ventral visual-stream function in humans.