Development of Non-visual Mental Functions and Capacities

Abstract

Visual perception does not act independently, but is orchestrated together with other mental functions and capacities. What happens when a child has lost his favourite toy and tries to find it? First, the child has to have sufficient interest to search for the toy (motivation). Then the child has to remember what the toy looks like to recognise it visually (visual memory). The process of visual searching then starts, with shifting the field of vision and transport of the fovea to places where the toy might be, using eye and head movements (attention, motor activities, and monitoring of the search process). It is important that the child maintains attention throughout the search process and avoids distraction by other toys (sustained attention and concentration; control of attention; response inhibition). In addition, the child needs to remember the areas already searched (visual working memory). Once the child has eventually found the toy and has recognised it as his favourite one (visual recognition and visual memory), the child may well be happy that search was successful (emotion, reward). This simple example shows that visual perception without motivation, attention, memory, executive function and action would not work successfully. The content and activity of visual perception are embedded in cognition, motivation, emotion, language and action. The respective functional brain systems interact in a reciprocal way with the visual system, and support visually guided activities. Without reference to these systems, neither normal nor impaired visual perception can be understood and explained. In the following sections, development of attention, learning and memory, executive functions, language, emotions, motivation and social behaviour are briefly described. For more detailed presentations, see Granrud (1993), Cole and Cole (2001), de Haan and Johnson (2013). There is evidence for some gender-specific differences in the development of cognition, which are mainly interpreted in the context of sex hormone differences (Berenbaum et al. 2002). Spatial abilities and working memory appear enhanced by androgens at several stages in development; boys may therefore show higher performance than girls in both domains. In contrast, verbal capacities (verbal memory, verbal fluency) are enhanced by oestrogens, which may explain why girls outperform boys in this domain.