Abstract
Purpose: :
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) has become an increasing but not fully recognized problem in Russia. However, investigations of ophthalmological and visual functions by traditional methods seem not to fully outline the problems these children may have. We therefore decided to evaluate motion perception in FAS children.
Methods: :
We investigated 49 Russian orphanage children (29 boys, 20 girls; mean age 13.9 y; range 10–16 y) with a verified diagnosis of FAS and 40 control children (mean age 13.2 years) matched by sex, age and orphanage. The method used was a computer based motion detection test based on random dot kinematograms (RDK) consisting of 100 or less moving (in one of eight directions) white dots on a black screen. The stimuli were presented in two different sequences; either sequentially (normal, test 1) with increasing difficulty (increased noise level) or at random (test 2) Chromatic motion detection was also analyzed by the similar test but red and green equiluminant RDKs (sequential presentation only; test 3). The equiluminant level of the red and green stimuli was measured for each subject before the testing.
Results: :
FAS children differ from controls in that they showed a lower performance at all noise levels in all three tests analyzed together (p= .048), but analyzed separately only test 1 showed a significant difference between the two groups (p=.005).
Conclusions: :
Motion perception is thought to be involved in magnocellular function and based on our results it seems to be impaired in FAS children. Our results indicate that the differences between FAS and control children that was found with black/white normal sequence suggest that motion perception stimulus is efficient to investigate the perception performance. However, there was no significant difference in motion perception in the random (test 2) and color (test 3) conditions suggesting that random sequence and the color version are less efficient to discriminate between the two groups. The impaired motion perception may have implications for other visual functions such as reading. Further studies are in progress.
Keywords: perception • motion-2D • development