Development of a training protocol to improve reading performance in peripheral vision.
People with central-field loss must use peripheral vision for reading. Previous studies have shown that reading performance in peripheral vision can improve with extensive practice on a trigram letter-recognition task. The present study compared training on this task with training on two other character-based tasks (lexical-decision and Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) reading) which might plausibly produce more improvement in peripheral reading speed. Twenty-eight normally-sighted young adults were trained at 10 degrees in the lower visual field in a pre/post design. All three training methods produced significant improvements in reading speed, with average gains of 39% for lexical-decision, 54% for trigram letter-recognition, and 72% for RSVP training. Although the RSVP training was most effective, the lexical-decision task has the advantage of easy self administration making it more practical for home-based training.
Yu
Deyue
D
School of Optometry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. dion@berkeley.edu
Legge
Gordon E
GE
Park
Heejung
H
Gage
Emily
E
Chung
Susana T L
ST
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D011932:Reading; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult