Acceleration of vision changes object representations from infancy to adulthood
- 1CNRS UMR5229, Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod
Abstract
While much of the neural and cognitive machinery for visual perception is in place within weeks from birth, we identified and quantified a fundamental difference between infant and adult vision: the temporal rate at which meaningful visual information can be reliably extracted. Using frequency-tagging electroencephalography with rapid serial visual presentation, we found that object categorization at 4 and 9 months is respectively seven times and two to three times slower than in adults. Using quantitative information from infants experiments, we created and presented accelerated visual streams to adults, to match infants perceptual experience. We used deep convolutional neural networks to identify object representations that match those elicited in adults when accelerating the information flow. Results show that acceleration compromises finer-grained object distinction while sparing broad, general object representations. We propose that slow vision is a design feature of early development for preserving and highlighting the most stable and general features of the world.
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BibTeX
@misc{spriet2026acceleration,
title = {{Acceleration of vision changes object representations from infancy to adulthood}},
author = {C. Spriet and E. Serraille and S. Naderi and M. Agrebi and Z. Bouyahia and S. Derrode and D. Kaiser and L. Papeo and J.-R. Hochmann},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.02.756174},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.02.756174v1},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Acceleration of vision changes object representations from infancy to adulthood
AU - C. Spriet
AU - E. Serraille
AU - S. Naderi
AU - M. Agrebi
AU - Z. Bouyahia
AU - S. Derrode
AU - D. Kaiser
AU - L. Papeo
AU - J.-R. Hochmann
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/02
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.02.756174
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.02.756174v1
AB - While much of the neural and cognitive machinery for visual perception is in place within weeks from birth, we identified and quantified a fundamental difference between infant and adult vision: the temporal rate at which meaningful visual information can be reliably extracted. Using frequency-tagging electroencephalography with rapid serial visual presentation, we found that object categorization at 4 and 9 months is respectively seven times and two to three times slower than in adults. Using quantitative information from infants experiments, we created and presented accelerated visual streams to adults, to match infants perceptual experience. We used deep convolutional neural networks to identify object representations that match those elicited in adults when accelerating the information flow. Results show that acceleration compromises finer-grained object distinction while sparing broad, general object representations. We propose that slow vision is a design feature of early development for preserving and highlighting the most stable and general features of the world.
ER -