Developmental trends in pursuit eye movements among preschool children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental differences in pursuit eye movements among preschool children. The subjects were 28 children aged 3 to 6 years old and 5 adults aged 22 to 37 years. The target was moved sinusoidally on the horizontal plane at 0.3-, 0.5-, and 0.7-Hz stimulus frequency. The power ratio which represented the smoothness of eye movements and the phase difference between eye movements and target movement was calculated. The power ratio decreased with increased stimulus frequency for all subjects, indicating that eye movements became less smooth. At all stimulus frequencies, the power ratio was higher for adults than for children. Among the three age groups of children, there was no statistically significant difference on this parameter. The phase shifted from a small amount of lead for no lag to the lag with faster stimulus frequency in adults, but the gap was not statistically significant. For children, there was a statistically significant difference across age groups on change in the phase difference. These findings may suggest that the developmental differences in pursuit eye movements of children across ages 3 to 6 years were clear in what related to the phase difference.