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Updated: Aug 8, 2026
Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
Published on: March 18, 2019
[Development of auditory-visual spatial integration using saccadic response time as the index]
Masaharu Kato1, Kaoru Konishi, Makiko Kurosawa
1Department of Infant Brain and Cognitive Development, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Tokyo.
Insights
Infants develop auditory-visual spatial integration between 5 and 11 months, as shown by shorter saccadic response times (SRTs) to multisensory stimuli. This developmental change impacts eye movement control and superior colliculus function.
Area of Science:
- Developmental neuroscience
- Sensory processing
- Ophthalmology
Context:
- Infants' ability to integrate auditory and visual information is crucial for development.
- Understanding the timeline of auditory-visual integration is key to identifying developmental milestones.
- Saccadic eye movements provide a measurable indicator of sensory processing and integration.
Purpose:
- To investigate the developmental trajectory of auditory-visual spatial integration in infants.
- To determine the age at which infants can effectively integrate spatially aligned and misaligned auditory and visual stimuli.
- To explore the neural mechanisms, including cortical control of the superior colliculus, underlying this integration process.
Summary:
- Saccadic response times (SRTs) were measured in 4-, 5-, and 11-month-old infants using electro-oculography (EOG) while they were exposed to ipsilateral or contralateral auditory-visual stimuli.
- SRTs decreased with age, indicating developmental improvements in processing speed.
- While SRTs were similar for visual-only and ipsilateral auditory-visual stimuli across all ages, significantly longer SRTs for contralateral stimuli in 11-month-olds, compared to younger infants, suggest the emergence of auditory-visual spatial integration.
Impact:
- Findings indicate that infants develop the capacity for auditory-visual spatial integration between 5 and 11 months of age.
- The results suggest that the superior colliculus's cortical control, influenced by stimulus spatial configuration, matures during this period.
- The study highlights potentially distinct developmental timelines for multiple pathways involved in superior colliculus control.
Abstract:
We measured saccadic response time (SRT) to investigate developmental changes related to spatially aligned or misaligned auditory and visual stimuli responses. We exposed 4-, 5-, and 11-month-old infants to ipsilateral or contralateral auditory-visual stimuli and monitored their eye movements using an electro-oculographic (EOG) system. The SRT analyses revealed four main results. First, saccades were triggered by visual stimuli but not always triggered by auditory stimuli. Second, SRTs became shorter as the children grew older. Third, SRTs for the ipsilateral and visual-only conditions were the same in all infants. Fourth, SRTs for the contralateral condition were longer than for the ipsilateral and visual-only conditions in 11-month-old infants but were the same for all three conditions in 4- and 5-month-old infants. These findings suggest that infants acquire the function of auditory-visual spatial integration underlying saccadic eye movement between the ages of 5 and 11 months. The dependency of SRTs on the spatial configuration of auditory and visual stimuli can be explained by cortical control of the superior colliculus. Our finding of no differences in SRTs between the ipsilateral and visual-only conditions suggests that there are multiple pathways for controlling the superior colliculus and that these pathways have different developmental time courses.
