University College London/Birkbeck - Child's-eye view offers surprises

Scientists at two London institutions have found that children under 12 do not combine sensory inputs to make sense of the world as adults do. The team at University College London and Birkbeck, University of London asked people of different ages to compare two slanted surfaces through 3D glasses and judge which was "flatter". Participants were given perspective and binocular information separately or together, and the study indicates that it is not until the age of 12 that children learn to combine the two sources in order to improve their accuracy. In another study, however, six-year-olds proved better than adults at spotting whether discs were slanted at the same or different angles. The results were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.