Figure 1.
Experimental design for the eye exercise group.
Following a 10 minute RSVP task, subjects in the eye exercise group were instructed to follow a moving box on the screen, effectively performing numerous saccadic eye movements, before being assessed in a second RSVP task.
Figure 2.
Experimental design for the control group.
Following a 10 minute RSVP task, subjects were asked to fixate on a movie clip presented in a very small box on the screen, effectively performing a very limited amount of eye movements, before being assessed in a second RSVP task.
Figure 3.
Experimental paradigm for the modified RSVP task.
All letters were presented at central fixation, with target letters appearing in white and non-target letters appearing in black font.
Table 1.
Response accuracy during RSVP task.
Figure 4.
Comparing pre- and post-training response accuracy to target letters between groups.
Subjects who were trained with eye exercise (grey and black bars) showed significant enhancement in responding to target letters separated by one distractor (‘One’ condition) following eye exercise training, and were approaching significance when responding to two sequentially presented target letters (‘Zero’ condition). This enhancement was not shown in the control group (cross-hatched and white bars), and there were no changes in either group’s accuracy of detecting targets separated by more than one distractor. *−P = 0.05, ‡−P = 0.079.
Figure 5.
The influence of eye exercises on letter identification.
Subjects who were trained with eye exercises showed a significant increase in the letter identification task following the post-training RSVP task compared to letter identification performed after the pre-training RSVP task. *−P<0.05.