Mid-level visual processing in peripheral vision

What can you see out of “the corner of your eye”? It is common for people to think that peripheral vision is “bad” while central vision is “good”. After all, we are almost constantly moving our eyes to bring different parts of the world into our more-focused central field of view. But it may not be as simple as that. Walking around with paper towel tubes limiting your view to only the “good” central part, for example, would be challenging and frustrating. Instead, this project considers the possibility that central and peripheral vision serve different functional roles in visual perception more generally. This work uses displays that change depending on where a person is looking to isolate what part of the visual field people can see, and then to measure a wide range of basic visual processes across the visual field. It is testing the general hypothesis that central vision is perceptually organized, resulting in representations of the world in terms of 3D objects and surfaces, whereas peripheral vision is perceptually unorganized, resulting in 2D representations that are more like textures than objects. This work can provide explanations for different specific functional deficits that are experienced by individuals with specific visual field loss, such as central loss from macular degeneration or peripheral loss from glaucoma. This project is jointly funded by Perception, Action and Cognition (PAC), the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and Smart and Connected Health (SCH). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.