Abstract
Vision is a basic cognitive ability that profoundly impacts an enormous range of personal and professional tasks. Accordingly, numerous studies of perceptual learning examine mechanisms that can improve vision. However a limit of extant studies is that learning effects often fail to transfer beyond the trained task or stimuli and even less so to real world conditions. Here we show results of a new vision training paradigm in which learning principles that have been well established in individual studies are combined to create an integrated training designed to produce broad based improvements to vision. We applied this training program to the University of California Riverside Baseball Team and assessed benefits using standard eye-charts as well as batting statistics from their game season. We found trained players improved their visual acuity and contrast sensitivity compared to untrained players. Analysis of game statistics show that trained players decreased strike-outs, created more runs, and the team won more games than predicted by the previous years performance and typical year-to-year improvements compared to the rest of the league. These results demonstrate real world transferable benefits of a vision-training program based on perceptual learning principles. This training approach has great potential to improve perceptual abilities in individuals, such as athletes looking to optimize their visual skills or as a therapy to help improve vision in individual with low vision.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014