Effects of lateral displacement of the visual field on the development of visual-motor abilities in cats

In this study, we test the flexibility of the cat's visual system by examining the visual-motor effects of both moderate and extreme lateral displacement of the visual field. While being reared with masks that provided either 0, 15, or 30 diopters lateral displacement of the visual field, 23 kittens received 3 tests of visual-motor abilities: a visual cliff task, a visual guiding task, and a five-alley choice task. No significant differences were found among the 0, 15, or 30 diopter displacement groups for any of the 3 tasks for either the total number of days to reach criterion performance, for the development of performance over time during the early days of testing, or for the development over time to criterion performance. After reaching criterion, kittens readapted to transposed conditions of displacement. The group changed 30 diopters did significantly worse than the group changed 15 diopters, both in error scores and in time to criterion performance. The present results with kittens are compared to those of other investigators and suggestions are made for future research.