Visual context integration is not fully developed in 4-year-old children

Long-range horizontal interactions supporting contour integration were found to be weaker in children than in adults (Kovacs et al, 1999 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 96 12204 - 12209). In the present study, integration on a larger scale, between a target and its context was investigated. Contextual modulation of the percept of a local target can be directly measured in the case of geometric illusions. We compared the magnitude of a size contrast illusion (Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles) in children and adults. 4-year-old children and adults performed 2AFC size comparisons between two target disks in the classical Ebbinghaus illusion display and in two other modified versions. We found that the magnitude of the illusion effect was significantly smaller in children than in adults. Our interpretation is that context integration is not fully developed in 4-year-old children. Closer-to-veridical-size estimations by children demonstrate that the perception of the local target is less affected by stimulus context in their case. We suggest that immature cortical connectivity is behind the reduced contextual sensitivity in children.