Reading performance in middle-aged adults with declines in accommodation

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of presbyopia on the reading ability of middle-aged adults in a Japanese reading context, using the rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. Japanese words, each consisting of three characters, were sequentially presented at the same location on a display screen. Participants were instructed to read the words aloud as accurately as possible, irrespective of their order within the sequence. Experiment 1 showed that the reading performance for the presbyopes was far worse for the near-viewing (35 cm) than for the far-viewing (70 cm) conditions when the words were presented at 0.4°in character size. Experiment 2 investigated in detail the effect of luminance contrast on reading at a viewing distance of 35 cm. The minimums of the exposure durations within which the participants could read the words above 89.9 % correct (minimum exposure duration) were 498 ms/ word for the presbyopes and 134 ms/word for the nonpresbyopes, both of which values were obtained at 100 % contrast. The critical contrast-that is, the contrast that doubled the minimum exposure duration that had been obtained at 100 % contrast-was considerably higher for the presbyopes (39.2 %) than for the nonpresbyopes (16.4 %). However, the reading performance for the presbyopes was improved more than threefold when the contrast was increased to 100 % in both experiments. Thus, our results provide psychophysical evidence for the dependency of presbyopes' reading on viewing distance and luminance contrast.

Effects of aging, word frequency, and text stimulus quality on reading across the adult lifespan: Evidence from eye movements.

“…Experiment 1 also compared the reading of middle-aged readers to young and older readers. Previous studies hinted at age differences in reading for those in middle age ( Calabrèse et al, 2016 ; Soederberg Miller, 2009 ; see also Teramoto et al, 2012 ). However, the maximum age of participants in these studies (59 years) was higher than for the middle-aged participants included here (51 years).…”

“…Gaining a greater understanding of when these differences emerge may help to shed light on the role of specific visual factors on reading performance. Some studies hint at a slowdown in reading for those in middle age (e.g., 35–59 years; Calabrèse et al, 2016 ; Soederberg Miller, 2009 ; see also Teramoto, Tao, Sekiyama, & Mori, 2012 ), although none have employed eye movement methods to examine these differences in detail. An important consideration in the current study, therefore, was to establish at what point during the adult life span low-contrast text becomes problematic for reading.…”

Functional Visual Acuity of Early Presbyopia

“…Akutsu et al[ 2 ] identified an age-related decline in reading speed, which they suggested is due to age-related losses in visual contrast sensitivity. Teramoto et al[ 40 ] described a strong effect of accommodative power on reading at near but also suggested the effect of decreased retinal illuminance and contrast sensitivity. Those previous studies have shown that it may be insufficient to evaluate the daily near visual performance in older adults based on only the AA or conventional VA testing.…”

Suppression of presbyopia progression with pirenoxine eye drops: experiments on rats and non-blinded, randomized clinical trial of efficacy

“…Pirenoxine eye drops have been reported to reduce the optical density in the cortical lens layers and beneath the posterior capsule in humans 20 . It also has been reported that higher lens density worsens the contrast sensitivity 21 and the near visual function of presbyopes improves by increasing the contrast 22 . Considering that the lens density increases with age 23 , improvement in the lens transparency might be a reason for the improved DCNFVA in the TG in subjects in their sixth decade of life.…”