| Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing processing of visual information in amblyopic children, which will help us do research on the pathogenesis and find new therapy of amblyopia.Methods: The equivalent input noise approach and a staircase method were used to measure the children's threshold contrast for detection of first- and second-order in the discrimination task of pattern recognition.Results: Three subject groups including 60 children, 120 eyes participated in the study. The results indicated that:1. In the control group, the difference between the two eyes in threshold contrast for first- and second-order was not significant, and threshold contrast for first- and second-order had positive correlation.2. In binoculai" amblyopia group, the difference between the two eyes in threshold contrast for first- and second-order was not signification, and both were higher than those of the control group, which was significant; threshold contrasts for first- and second-order had positive correlation, but the Pearson coefficient was different from the control group.3. In healthy eyes and bad eyes of monocular amblyopia group, there were differences between the performances of first- and second-order.(1) The difference between the two eyes in threshold contrast for first-order was not significant, and it was higher than the control group and lower than the binocular amblyopia group, but these differences were not significant.(2) The difference between the two eyes in threshold contrast for second-order was significant, and in quantity the control group is lower than healthy eyes of monocular amblyopia group, and healthy eyes of monocular amblyopia group is lower than bad eyes of monocular amblyopia group, and bad eyes of monocular amblyopia group is lower than the binocular amblyopia group, where differences between every two groups were significant, except the difference between bad eyes of the monocular amblyopia group and the binocular amblyopia group.(3) There was no correlation between threshold contrasts for first- and second-order in this group.Conclusion:1. Binocular interaction may have influence on the visual information processing in amblyopia, and there will be different performances in visual cognition when the two eyes are in different conditions.2. Features of the stimuli pattern and properties of the information may influence on the visual information processing in amblyopia, which is selective.3. New points on the pattern of visual loss in amblyopia:(1) The healthy eye of monocular amblyopia may be not "healthy", and the bad eye may have some normal ability in pattern recognition.(2) Binocular amblyopia may be similar to the normal in visual information processing, whose signal-noise ratio becomes lower than the normal. |
