Influence of presbyopic corrections on driving-related eye and head movements

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate whether wearing different presbyopic
refractive corrections alters the pattern of eye and head movements
when searching for dynamic targets in driving-related
traffic scenes.
Methods: Eye and head movements of 20 presbyopes (mean
age = 56.2  5.7 years), who had no experience of wearing presbyopic
corrections or were unadapted wearers were recorded using
the faceLABTM eye and head tracker, while wearing five different
corrections: single vision lenses (SV), progressive addition lenses
(PALs), bifocal spectacles (BIF), monovision and multifocal
contact lenses (MTF CLs) in random order (within-subjects comparison).
Recorded traffic scenes of suburban roads and expressways
with edited targets were viewed as dynamic stimuli.
Results: The magnitude of eye and head movements was significantly
greater for SV, BIF and PALs than monovision and MTF
CLs (p < 0.001). In addition, BIF wear led to more eye movements
than PAL wear (p = 0.017), while PAL wear resulted in greater
head movements than SV wear (p = 0.018). The ratio of eye to
head movement was smaller for PALs than all other groups
(p < 0.001). The number of saccades made to fixate a target was
significantly higher for BIF and PALs than monovision or MTF
CLs (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: Different presbyopic corrections can alter eye and
head movement patterns. Wearing spectacles such as BIF and
PALs produced relatively greater eye and head movements and
saccades when viewing dynamic targets. The impact of these
changes in eye and head movement patterns may have implications
for driving performance under real world driving
conditions.