Advantage of early over late perceptual experience in improving form discrimination.

Abstract

To test the hypothesis that rats have perceptual experience with specific visual forms early in infancy will be superior in form discrimination to rats having comparable experiences later, one group was continuously exposed to triangles and crosses from the age of 16 to 41 days and another group lived with the same figures from 41 to 66 days. Two control groups with minimum visual form experience were used. Each form-experienced group was superior to the control group of the same age, and the early experienced group was superior to the late group in both form discrimination and generalization. The results are consistent with Hebb''s position that learning is more effective when it occurs earlier in life.