Changing view of eye dominance

Woodhouse, Rhodri 2009. Changing view of eye dominance. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

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Abstract

Eye dominance can be broadly defined as the preference for one eye over the other and several distinct types of eye dominance have been identified since the existence of eye dominance was first recorded in the 16th century. Since then, eye dominance has generally been assumed to be a fixed quantity, but recent work has shown that one form of eye dominance can change with gaze direction. This finding was directly investigated in this thesis, as was the ability for other forms of eye dominance to switch between the eyes. It was found that eye dominance switching does take place and there is evidence for a hierarchy of cues which trigger changes in two types of dominance. Differences in retinal image size appear to be the cue that is most heavily favoured when determining which eye is treated as dominant. Other cues include eye position signals and differences in luminance between the eyes, the latter suggesting that eye dominance switching is not controlled solely by changes in gaze direction. The relation between eye dominance and the centre of visual direction, the egocentre, was also considered. It was found that the egocentre is unlikely to change location in a manner similar to eye dominance. The conclusion of this work sets dominance switching within the context of a mechanism designed to maximise the amount of data available for use by the visual system.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Optometry and Vision Sciences
ISBN:	9781303189258
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	07 Jan 2022 02:44
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/55827

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