Elam Cutts¹, Madeline Ragland¹, Pinar Demirayak¹, Marcello Maniglia², Jaap Munneke³, Aaron Seitz³, Nicholas Turk-Brown⁴, Kristina Visscher¹; ¹University of Alabama at Birmingham, ²University of California Riverside, ³Northeastern University, ⁴Yale University

Patients who lose vision in the center of the retina must adapt to this vision loss by learning to use peripheral vision for daily tasks. Many develop an area within the retina which they use preferentially for daily tasks, called the Preferred Retinal Locus (PRL). Learning to use this peripheral retina for daily vision involves improving low level factors like visual sensitivity, mid-level factors like spatial integration, and high-level factors like attention and eye movements. We trained healthy vision participants to use a peripheral location, assigning participants to be trained on low-level, mid-level, high-level factors, or a combination training, using a gaze contingent display with a simulated scotoma. Participants were tested before and after training on tasks that assess these factors of vision in their peripheral vision, as well as more ecological tasks, including reading. In general, we found that training on a given factor improved performance on that factor and less-so to other factors (near transfer). Further, improvements on low-level and mid-level tasks regardless of training type, predicted improvement in more ecological tasks. These results are consistent with the idea that training on low-level features in the artificial context of a training game may lead to improvements in real-world activities of daily living. I will discuss this work in the context of developing more efficient and effective training paradigms.