Visual half-field development in children: Detection of colour-contrast-defined forms

Recently we have shown that children's ability to perceive motion-defined forms shows an asymmetry in the left and right visual half-fields which disappears in adulthood. The present study is focused on the visual half-field development of colour contrast vision in the same group of subjects. It was found that colour contrast thresholds for the detection of colour-contrast-defined forms decrease with age to reach adult values around puberty. This improvement of colour contrast vision with age is attributed to the maturation of cortical mechanisms. However, in contrast to a visual half-field asymmetry for motion detection during childhood, no visual half-field differences were observed for colour contrast detection in children.