City Research Online

Abstract

Purpose: Do one-eyed (uniocular) humans utilize monocular depth cues differently from those with intact binocularity to perform depth-related visuomotor tasks that emulate complex activities of daily living? If so, does performance depend on the participant’s age, duration of uniocularity and head movements?

Methods: 45 uniocular cases (age range: 6 – 37 years; 2.4 months – 31.0 years of uniocularity) and 46 age similar binocular controls performed a task that required them to pass a hoop around an electrified wire convoluted in depth multiple times, while avoiding contact as indicated by auditory feedback. The task was performed with and without head restraint, in random order. The error rate and speed were calculated from the frequency of contact between the hoop and wire and the total task duration (adjusting for error time), respectively, all determined from video recordings of the task. Head movements were analysed from the videos using face-tracking software.

Results: Error rate decreased with age (p<0.001) until the late teen years while speed revealed no such trend. Across all ages, the error rate increased and speed decreased in the absence of binocularity (p<0.001). There was no additional error reduction with duration of uniocularity (p ≥0.16). Head movements provided no advantage to task performance, despite generating parallax disparities comparable to binocular viewing.

Conclusions: Performance in a dynamic, depth-related visuomotor task is reduced in the absence of binocular viewing, independent of age-related performance level. This study finds no evidence for a prolonged experience with monocular depth cues being advantageous for such tasks over transient loss of binocularity.

Publication Type:	Article
Publisher Keywords:	Binocular advantage; Head movements; Motion parallax; Retinoblastoma; Uniocular vision; Visuomotor
Subjects:	R Medicine > RE Ophthalmology
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Optometry & Visual Sciences
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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