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Magnification alone does not improve face perception in AMD
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Magnification alone does not improve face perception and emotion recognition in patients with visual impairment due to age-related macular degeneration, according to a study.
A team of psychologists and optometrists in two universities in Canada set up a study in which 20 patients with AMD and vision of at least 20/126 in the better eye were compared with healthy controls.
A set of 360 images depicting faces of individuals of different age, gender and race were shown on a computer screen in three different consecutive sizes, replicating viewing across a street, across a room and at arm’s length. All faces were either emotionally neutral or expressed happiness or anger. Participants were placed on a chin rest at a distance of 70 cm and were asked to verbalize emotion recognition.
Participants with AMD performed more poorly than controls with all image sizes, for both emotion detection and categorization of emotions. Magnification only slightly improved their performance.
Heat maps of fixation showed that healthy subjects adopted the typical T-shape fixation pattern around the eye and mouth region for emotion detection, while in the majority of AMD participants, fixation location was random. Only a few of them showed a T-shaped pattern of eye movements, but shifted away from the eyes and mouth.
According to the authors, this might demonstrate that AMD patients use “a new location on the retina to serve as pseudofovea (or a preferred retinal location) for facial feature processing.”
These findings led the authors to conclude that “magnification alone is not the answer when trying to improve performance in emotion detection. Instead, it might need to be combined with other techniques.”– by Michela Cimberle
Disclosure: The authors reported no financial disclosures
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