Experience and Visual Development: Behavioral Evidence

Intersensory coordination and the effects of early sensory deprivation

“…It is, hoyrever, clear that visually naive rats were as able as visually experienced rats to abstract temporal attributes from modality specific aspects of acoustical signals and relate these to subsequent visual events during their very first experience with such signals. That is to say, as Church and others seem to have assumed, an early visual stimulation history may very well play less of a role in the case of intersensory coordination related to the dimension of duration than we and others might have expected (Burnstine, Greenough, & Tees, 1984;Tees, 1986).…”

“…More significantly, while visually naive DR animals were as effective as LR animals in acquiring the auditory temporal discrimination, they were significantly less so when faced initially with a duration discrimination involved in visual events. As we have discussed previously (e.g., Tees, 1976Tees, , 1986, lack of experience leaves most mammals less attentive to and/or less able in processing some spatial aspects of visual events. Performance during this phase of our study would seem to suggest the temporal integrative competence required in our visual duration discrimination was adversely affected by a lack of a previous stimulation history involving visual events in much the same way as is the ability to integrate such relational properties between linear elements, e.g., as contour separation or angle/junction (Tees, 1986).…”

“…As we have discussed previously (e.g., Tees, 1976Tees, , 1986, lack of experience leaves most mammals less attentive to and/or less able in processing some spatial aspects of visual events. Performance during this phase of our study would seem to suggest the temporal integrative competence required in our visual duration discrimination was adversely affected by a lack of a previous stimulation history involving visual events in much the same way as is the ability to integrate such relational properties between linear elements, e.g., as contour separation or angle/junction (Tees, 1986). However, the performances during the further phases of the experiment suggest this to be a rather simple-minded interpretation.…”

The effect of early experience on water maze spatial learning and memory in rats

“…The effect is not large and it is understandable that some researchers have failed to find this effect in other tests in the water maze (Jacobs, Zaborowski, & Whishaw, 1989). There is certainly evidence available in other experimental (dry land) situations for both latent spatial and nonspatial learning (e.g., Chamizo & Mackintosh, 1989;Tees, 1986). While our results provided confirmation of latent spatial learning in the Morris Water Maze, the argument that these visually experienced LR animals recognized and used the information about the correct platform location and its relationship to distal cues in the room would have been more persuasive if we were able to demonstrate not only positive transfer, but also negative transfer for animals being tested under Condition B (Incorrect Location) in comparison to animals (Condition C) placed on a platform in an entirely different environment.…”

“…In addition, we were interested in whether or not a month's delay after one day of training would affect visually inexperienced rat's memory for the correct location more than visually experienced animals. A great deal of evidence has accumulated that suggests that lack of early visual stimulation history can affect attention, memory, and perception of temporal and spatial relationships involving visual events (e.g., see Tees, 1986Tees, , 1990 for reviews).…”