Differences between naïve and expert observers’ vergence and accommodative responses to a range of targets

What is it about?

Most laboratory studies of ocular accommodation and convergence use locally available participants, who usually have some knowledge of vision. Our infant and non-expert studies suggested there might be a difference between expert and naive observers even if the experiment instructions were identical. We compared an uninstructed group of orthoptics and optometry students with a group of undergraduates with no specific visual science knowledge. The naive observers performed significantly worse on nearly all measures of convergence and accommodation than those with some vision knowledge under identical testing conditions.

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Why is it important?

If developmental and clinical studies are to be compared with normal values, the normal controls should be drawn from populations naive to vision science. Normative values drawn from laboratory studies on non-naive participants may have limited tranferrability to real-life or clinical situations