Abstract

Several recent reports (e.g. Guez et al., 1993; Schuchard, & Fletcher, 1994) have indicated that most patients with central scotoma develop a preferred retinal locus (PRL) adjacent and to the left of their scotoma in visual field space. Guez et al. suggested that this might be beneficial for reading because knowing where the eye has been would help guide the readers eye movements. However, this situation eliminates the possibility of gathering information from the letters to the right of fixation (because of the scotoma), which Rayner and his colleagues (e.g. 1980, 1982) have shown to be critical to reading. This implies that a PRL to the right of the scotoma border would be more beneficial to the reader because she would be able to gather information from the upcoming text, not the text that has already been deciphered.

© 1997 Optical Society of America