Effect of Age and Refractive Error on Local and Global Visual Perception in Chinese Children and Adolescents

PURPOSE: This study investigated the impact of age and myopia on visual form perception among Chinese school-age children. METHODS: This cross-sectional study included 1,074 students with a mean age of 12.1 ± 4.7 (range = 7.3–18.9) years. The mean spherical equivalence refraction (SER) of the participants was −1.45 ± 2.07 D. All participants underwent distance visual acuity (VA), refraction measurement and local and global visual form perception test including orientation, parallelism, collinearity, holes and color discrimination tasks. RESULTS: The reaction times of emmetropes were slower than those of myopic and high myopic groups on both local (orientation, parallelism, and collinearity) and global discrimination tasks (all p < 0.05). A reduction in reaction times was found with increasing age on both local and global discrimination tasks (all p < 0.05). Age was significantly associated with both local and global visual perception performance after adjusting for gender, visual acuity and SER (orientation, β = −0.54, p < 0.001; parallelism, β = −0.365, p < 0.001; collinearity, β = −0.28, p < 0.001; holes, β = −0.319, p < 0.001; color, β = −0.346, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed that both local and global visual perception improve with age among Chinese children and that myopes seem to have better visual perception than emmetropes.