title: Influence of Stiles-Crawford effect apodization on spatial visual performance.
abstract: The Stiles-Crawford effect is often invoked by vision scientists when predictions of the effects of aberrations and defocus on spatial visual performance are not borne out experimentally. Modeling the Stiles-Crawford effect as an apodization, we investigated the expected influence that it would have on spatial visual performance in the presence of 1-diopter primary spherical aberration at the edge of a 6-mm-diameter centered pupil. The changes in refraction produced by a high Stiles-Crawford effect, according to various criteria, were small at approximately 0.10 diopter. The Stiles-Crawford effect has only a small capability to compensate for defocus and spherical aberration. These results indicate that the Stiles-Crawford effect has little influence on spatial visual performance in the case of centered pupils. We suggest that the faith that has often been placed in the Stiles-Crawford effect to account for discrepancies between experimental results and expected results is not justified, at least for well-centered pupils and Stiles-Crawford effects.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Eye Research, School of Optometry, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Atchison
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Joblin
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D008027:Light; D008954:Models, Biological; D012029:Refraction, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D012160:Retina / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*