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Updated: Oct 13, 2025
Author Spotlight: An Automated Method for Assessing Visual Acuity in Infants and Toddlers Using an Eye-Tracking System
Published on: March 17, 2023
Visual Development of Healthy Full-Term Infants under 24 Months of Age Using the Preverbal Visual Assessment
Eunhee Kim1, JungSoo Lee2, Hae-Yeon Park3
1Department of Pediatrics, Areumdri Pediatric Clinic, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea, med1206@hanmail.net.
Insights
The Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire offers reliable visual perception evaluation for infants under 24 months. It provides age-specific reference and cutoff scores, aiding early detection of developmental maturity.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric ophthalmology
- Developmental pediatrics
- Infant visual development
Background:
- Visual perception develops rapidly in early infancy, necessitating early detection of developmental maturity.
- Healthy infants have limited opportunities for visual perception evaluation, highlighting the need for reliable assessment tools.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present reference and cutoff scores for the Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire in healthy full-term infants.
- To analyze the reliability and potential influencing factors of PreViAs scores in infants under 24 months.
Main Methods:
- Retrospective study of 276 healthy full-term infants (<24 months).
- Utilized the Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire assessing global scores and four domains: visual attention (VA), visual communication (VC), visual-motor coordination (VMC), and visual processing (VP).
- Cronbach's α coefficient was used to assess internal consistency.
Main Results:
- High internal consistency was found for global scores (0.938) and VA (0.781), VMC (0.874), and VP (0.942) domains.
- In infants <12 months, gestational age positively correlated with global scores and VA, VMC, VP domains. VC correlated with sex, higher in females.
- No significant clinical factors were associated with PreViAs scores in infants ≥12 months.
Conclusions:
- The PreViAs questionnaire is a valuable tool for assessing visual perception in infants under 24 months.
- The study provides age-specific reference and cutoff scores, enabling estimation of visual perception maturation age.
- PreViAs supports early identification of potential visual developmental delays in infants.
Abstract:
As visual perception development proceeds rapidly after birth, early detection of developmental maturity is required. Healthy infants do not have many opportunities for visual perception evaluation, so a reliable evaluation method is necessary. This retrospective study included 276 healthy full-term infants <24 months of age using the Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire, which measures scores of subdivided age-groups for the global scores and 4 domains: visual attention (VA), visual communication (VC), visual-motor coordination (VMC), and visual processing (VP). Through this study, reference values and cutoff scores of the PreViAs questionnaire were presented, reliability was secured, and potential influencing factors of the PreViAs scores were analyzed. Using Cronbach's α coefficient, the global scores were 0.938, 0.781 for VA, 0.660 for VC, 0.874 for VMC, and 0.942 for VP. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was high in the global scores and 3 domains (VA, VMC, and VP). In infants under 12 months, the global scores and the VA, VMC, and VP domains showed positive association with gestational age, whereas the VC domain correlated with sex: which was found to be greater for females (p < 0.05). In those 12 month and above, no clinical factors were significantly associated with the PreViAs scores in all domains. The PreViAs questionnaire is a useful tool for visual assessment of healthy full-term infants under 24 months of age, suggesting reference values and cutoff scores according to age, and estimating the maturation age for visual perception development of each domain.
