title: Accommodation and chromatic aberration in young children.
abstract: Retinoscopy through colored filters (chromoretinoscopy) was used to determine the portion of the chromatic aberration interval in focus when young children (2 to 6 years of age) fixate at far and near. The results indicate that the children may be divided into three distinct groups. In the youngest group there is haphazard focusing within the chromatic aberration interval at far and near. The middle group shows selective focusing of the red end of the chromatic interval at both far and near. Children in the oldest group focus the red end when fixating at far and the green end when fixating at near, thereby sparing accommodation. These results suggest that the eye's use of the chromatic aberration interval to spare accommodation, as found in previous studies carried out on adults, is learned by about the fourth year of a child's life.
mesh_terms: D000065:Accommodation, Ocular; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003118:Color Perception; D006801:Humans; D019721:Ophthalmoscopes; D009887:Ophthalmoscopy / Q000379:methods