Discrimination of visual movement in perceptually deprived cats

Perceptually deprived cats, reared so as to preclude a concurrence of visual experience with somesthetic and motor experience, and normal controls were trained monocularly on a task of visual movement discrimination and subsequently tested for interocular transfer. A relatively simple discriminatory response (conditioned leg flexion), which required neither visual guidance nor locomotion by Ss, was used. Deprived Ss learned the discrimination as rapidly as control Ss. Deprived, as well as control Ss demonstrated immediate interocular transfer. The findings are discussed in terms of the ability of Ss to distinguish between externally produced and self-induced visual movement.