Visual Backward Masking Performance in Young Adult Emmetropes and Myopes

Abstract

Myopes were more affected than emmetropes by masking stimuli for the location task. This was not affected by magnitude or progression rate of myopia, suggesting that myopes have the propensity for poor performance in locating briefly presented low contrast objects at an early stage of myopia development.

An exploratory study of temporal integration in the peripheral retina of myopes

“…40 Conversely, Kou et al (2012) studied visual processing using visual backward masking and found differences between myopes and emmetropes. 22 These results are not in conflict with our study because we were testing a distinct area with a different stimulus. Kuo tested letters parafovealy and we tested Gabors at greater eccentric locations.…”

“…Thus, mfERG results might be showing the effect of refractive error mixed with the effect of neural abnormalities. [19][20][21] Evidence that myopes have impaired temporal processing has been provided in a recent study by Kuo et al 22 Using psychophysics, Kuo found significant differences in interstimulus interval between myopes and emmetropes. These results reinforce the notion that myopes might have temporal visual processing deficits.…”

Defective Temporal Window of the Foveal Visual Processing in High Myopia

“…A possible reason why Kuo et al 21 did not find any statistically significant difference between low and high myopia might be the large individual differences in visual performance within each group. Although individual performance in the no-mask condition was treated as a covariate in their analysis, 21 including covariates is not as statistically powerful as controlling the variable directly. 26 Thus a strict control of spatial vision could help differentiate possible temporal differences between low and high myopia.…”

“…[17][18][19][20] It has been reported recently that myopes showed significantly reduced performance when viewing dynamic stimuli. [21][22][23] However, the temporal properties of visual information processing in high myopia have not received as much attention as spatial processing and are still not well understood.…”

“… 23 On the basis of these results, we might infer that high myopes may suffer difficulties when processing dynamic information. However, using a backward masking paradigm, 24 , 25 Kuo et al 21 reported that although myopes showed significantly decreased performance under the masking condition compared with emmetropes, there was no significant difference in performance between low and high myopes (although they noticed a trend for an effect of magnitude of myopia on task performance).…”