This document discusses age-related changes in visual sensation and visual perception. It begins by defining perception as gathering, monitoring, and interpreting sensory information, while sensation refers to stimulation of sensory receptors. Visual acuity, the clearness of vision, develops rapidly in infants and reaches adult levels by age 12 months. Approximately 80% of sensory information comes through vision. Key aspects of visual perception discussed include perception of space, objects, motion, and changes that occur with aging. The document also covers kinesthetic perception, which provides awareness of body movement and position through proprioceptors, and how perceptual abilities develop through childhood.

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Carl P. Gabbard
PowerPoint® Lecture Slide Presentation revised by
Alberto Cordova, University of Texas at San Antonio

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Perception
• Gathering, monitoring, and interpreting sensory
information
Sensation
◦ Stimulation of sensory receptors
 Vision plays a major role in most skill performance.
To better understand this role, we need to examine
age-related changes in visual sensation and visual
perception

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Visual acuity refers to clearness of vision
Static visual acuity
Newborn: 20/200 to 20/600 (Snellen)
3 months = Focus
6 months = 20/100
12 months = Adult-like
Dynamic visual acuity
Ability to perceive detail
in a moving object
Figure 6.3
Acuity is sharpness of sight.

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Approximately 80% of all sensory
information is derived via the visual system.
People depend heavily on visual perception in the
performance of most skills.
• 1. Perception of Space
• 2. Perception of Objects
• a. Figure-and –ground perception
• b. Whole-and-part perception
• c. Size constancy
• d. Shape constancy
• e. Habituation
• f. Spatial orientation
3. Perception of Motion

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 One of the fundamental perceptions is that of
three-dimensional space. Almost all
movements-reaching and grasping, locomotion,
and complex skills such as driving a car or
piloting a plane-depend on a perception of
three-dimensional space.

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 Among the important attributes of objects are
size, shape, and motion. The concept of "object"
is relative. An airplane pilot might consider a
runway to be an object, whereas a person
standing on the runway considers it a surface.

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 ability to see an object of interest as distinct
from the background.

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 ability to discriminate parts of a picture or an
object from the whole, yet integrate the parts
into the whole, perceiving them simultaneously

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 perception of actual object size despite the size
of its image as projected on our retina.

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 perception of actual object size despite the size
of its image as projected on our retina.

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 the state of having adapted to a stimulus

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 the orientation or position of objects as they are
located in space or in a two dimensional
drawing.

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*Some neurological mechanisms are dedicated to detecting
motion.
*Infants perceive motion.
*Perception of direction and velocity of motion improves during
infancy

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Kinesthesis arises from proprioceptors
The kinesthetic system might be described
as the system that gives us "body sense."
•The relative position of the body parts to each
other,
• The position of the body in space,
• The body's movements, and
•The nature of objects that the body comes into
contact with.

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Awareness of movement and body position
• “To move” and “sensation”
• Somatosensory system
• Cutaneous / proprioceptors
Receptors
• Vestibular apparatus
• Muscle spindle receptors
• Joint receptors
• Golgi tendon organs

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Kinesthetic (discrimination) Acuity
 Refers to the ability to detect differences
and match quantities (8 years)
Kinesthetic Memory
 Involves reproduction of movements (12
years)

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Body awareness
Spatial awareness
• Objective
• Egocentric
Directional awareness
• Laterality
• Directionality
Vestibular awareness
 Postural
 Static
 Dynamic
Rhythmic (temporal) awareness
 Coincident timing
 Rhythmic basic function 5 to 7
years

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 Ability to detect, discriminate, associate, and interpret
auditory stimuli
◦ Hearing present before birth
◦ Refinement from birth to 6 months—almost as sensitive
as adults
◦ Ability to localize occurs by age 3
◦ Significant improvement occurs into early teens

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◦ Refers to the ability to detect and interpret sensory
information cutaneously (of or on the skin)
 First responses to touch are on the facial area (fetus –
newborn).
 Well developed by 5 to 8 years
 After the age of four, visual dominance is present

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Intrasensory (individual sensory system)
Intersensory (perceptual integration)
• Simultaneous use of more than one sensory system

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• Ability to translate (perceive) information from one modality to
another
• Recognition of a stimulus as an equivalent (match) when they
are presented to two different modalities
Visual–Kinesthetic
• 2 to 3 weeks (imitate) 5 years, recognition of objects touched
Visual–Auditory
• By 4 months infants can link VA information
Auditory-Kinesthetic (limited)
• Child selects tactually by name, adult-like by 11 to 12 years

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Visual Perception
◦ Acuity  40 >
◦ Sensitivity to light 
◦ Depth (little change)
◦ Visual information processing 
◦ Perception of movement 
Kinesthetic Perception
◦ Touch sensitivity 
◦ Sense of body position (little change)
◦ Weight discrimination 
◦ Balance  70 >

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