Central research interest:
The effects of immaturities and abnormalities of the visual system on the development of vision.
Why is this interesting?
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Vision is a principal input for an infant's learning and development.
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Normal postnatal development of the eye and information processing in the brain depend on the quality of vision infants experience after birth.
Methods we use in our lab to study what a baby can see
Projects in our laboratory:
The studies in the lab incorporate approaches from the fields of neuroscience, psychology and medicine.
Current main goal: To understand the amount of blur that the infant eye experiences in its habitual world, and the role of blur in normal visual development.
I) The dynamics of ocular accommodation in infants. This series of studies is designed to understand how well an infant can maintain focus on an object moving in depth.
Recent presentations:
II) The stability of ocular accommodation during measurements of vision in infants. This series of studies is designed to understand the influence of blur due to unstable accommodation on measured visual performance in infants.
Recent presentations:
Candy, T.R., G.M. Tondel, & J. Wang (2004). Infants' accomodative responses to static targets. ARVO 2004.
III) How the optics (cornea and lens) of the developing eye affect the image produced on the retina. This series of studies is designed to understand if there are any differences in the optics of the developing infant eye compared to the adult eye that may affect the quality of the image produced on the retina.
Recent presentations:
Wang, J., G.M. Tondel, & T.R. Candy (2004). Higher-order monochromatic aberrations of human infant eyes. ARVO 2004.
