Visual discrimination learning in cats with different early visual experiences

Simultaneous object discrimination learning in an alimentary situation was strongly impaired in cats deprived from birth of patterned visual experience. The same impairment was observed in cats with experience limited to those objects that were used later in the discrimination task. Some impairment was also present in cats which were reared with opened eyes in the laboratory as compared with normal cats, that spent the early period of life outside of the laboratory. It is concluded that the deprived cats were impaired mainly because of the lack of opportunity during early development to use visual cues in alimentary tasks.