Influence of monocular deprivation during infancy on the later development of spatial and temporal vision

Using the method of limits, we measured spatial and temporal vision in 15 patients, aged 4-28 years, who had been monocularly deprived of patterned visual input during infancy by a dense cataract. All patients showed losses in both spatial and temporal vision, with greater losses in spatial than in temporal vision. Losses were smaller when there had been more patching of the non-deprived eye. The results indicate that visual deprivation has smaller effects on the neural mechanisms mediating temporal vision than on those mediating spatial vision.