To elucidate the possible traffic safety risks induced by visualfield defects, a method was developed based on a driving simulator.The capacity to detect stimuli of different sizes appearing in 24 different positions on the screen in front of the driver was measured. Two groups of normal subjects and a number of subjects with different visual field defects were studied. In the groups of normals, themedian reaction times were fairly homogenous. There was a slight difference between central and peripheral stimuli, which was somewhat larger for the older subjects. Among the subjects with field defects, the individual variations were very dominant. Very few of these showed a capacity to compensate for their deficiency. In order to gaininsight into possible compensatory mechanisms of these persons, eyemovement recordings were mad. The results indicate that the visualsearch pattern may be of importance in this respect. Some comparisons with respect to detection capacity were also made with one-eyed subjects and with optically generated field restrictions (spectacles and spectacle frames).(A).
Abstract