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The worse eye revisited: Evaluating the impact of asymmetric peripheral vision loss on everyday function

Chow-Wing-Bom, H., Dekker, T. M. & Jones, P. R. ORCID: 0000-0001-7672-8397 (2020). The worse eye revisited: Evaluating the impact of asymmetric peripheral vision loss on everyday function. Vision Research, 169, pp. 49-57. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2019.10.012

Abstract

In instances of asymmetric peripheral vision loss (e.g., glaucoma), binocular performance on simple psychophysical tasks (e.g., static threshold perimetry) is well-predicted by the better seeing eye alone. This suggests that peripheral vision is largely ‘better-eye limited’. In the present study, we examine whether this also holds true for real-world tasks, or whether even a degraded fellow eye contributes important information for tasks of daily living. Twelve normally-sighted adults performed an everyday visually-guided action (finding a mobile phone) in a virtual-reality domestic environment, while levels of peripheral vision loss were independently manipulated in each eye (gaze-contingent blur). The results showed that even when vision in the better eye was held constant, participants were significantly slower to locate the target, and made significantly more head- and eye-movements, as peripheral vision loss in the worse eye increased. A purely unilateral impairment increased response times by up to 25%, although the effect of bilateral vision loss was much greater (> 200%). These findings indicate that even a degraded fellow eye still contributes important information for performing everyday visually-guided actions. This may have clinical implications for how patients with visual field loss are managed or prioritized, and for our understanding of how visual information in the periphery is integrated.

Publication Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2020. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publisher Keywords: Peripheral Vision, Psychophysics, Visual Field Loss, Virtual Reality, Eye-tracking, Binocular Vision
Subjects: R Medicine > RE Ophthalmology
Departments: School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Optometry & Visual Sciences
SWORD Depositor:
[thumbnail of VR-19-150_ForCopyeditors_Manuscript_v7_2.pdf]
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