AGING AND LOW-CONTRAST VISION - FACE PERCEPTION

Abstract

Previous work showed that despite good visual acuity, many healthy older people require more contrast to see gratings of low and intermediate spatial frequencies than do younger observers. A daily perceptual activity, which relies on lower spatial frequency information, is also adversely affected: as compared to young individuals, many older individulas require more contrast to detect a face and to discriminate between 2 faces. Ocular pathology, optical changes within the eyeball and variation in criterion are ruled out as explanations for the age-related elevation in threshold.