Pursuit Tracking Performance and Flash Disruption: The Effects of Training the Non-Dominant Eye on Target Reacquisition

摘要

Shifting from the sighting to the non-sighting eye represents a possible solution for operators of monocular viewing devices whose vision is temporarily disrupted from the effects of flash. Twenty-four male volunteers used a viscous-damped mount optical tracking device to track targets at a constant angular velocity of 5 mrad/sec under bright and dim ambient light conditions. Pursuit tracking data were collected under simulated field conditions. Volunteers were randomly assigned to one of the three groups. The first group received no training of the non-sighting eye. The second group received training with both the sighting and non-sighting eyes, individually. The third group was trained in the same manner as the second group, except that they were also trained to switch eyes during tracking trials. On the test day, a monocular full field flash was used. The volunteers were instructed to switch eyes and reacquire the target with the non-sighting eye to complete the task. Analysis of Variance for horizontal RMS error scores revealed no significant group main effect for either the sighting eye baseline or the non-sighting eye baseline. The maximum absolute error scores for Group 3 under both bright and dim ambient light conditions were significantly better than Groups 1 and 2. It was concluded that training monocular devices operators to switch from the sighting to the non-sighting eye following disruption of pursuit tracking represents a temporary solution to the debilitating effects of flash blindness. (Author)