The Role of Eye Movements During Reading in Patients with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD)

Abstract

AMD patients often have particular difficulty reading, even when the text is magnified to compensate for reduced visual acuity. This study explores whether reading performance can be explained by eye movement factors. Forty patients with advanced AMD were tested with a high-speed video eye tracker to evaluate fixation stability and saccadic eye movements. Reading speed was measured for standardized texts viewed at the critical print size. Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were unrelated to reading speed, but fixation stability, proportion of regressive saccades and size of forward saccades were all significantly associated with reading performance, accounting for 74% of the variance. The implications of these findings for low-vision training programmes are discussed.

Keywords:

• Age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
• reading
• eye movements
• scotomas
• saccades

Notes

^† Although the term ‘PRL’ refers to a locus on the retina, we have followed the common practise of referring to the fixation locus relative to the scotoma in visual field space. Thus a PRL above a scotoma corresponds to a retinal locus below the lesion that is responsible for the scotoma.