| Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a prevalent eye disease with a severe impact on reading. People with AMD often lose their central vision and must use peripheral vision to read, making reading a slow and strenuous process. By studying normally-sighted young adults, the present research examines how peripheral reading can be improved, and also sheds light on the role of the visual system in reading. More specifically, a major goal is to develop a principled and optimized training method to enhance reading with peripheral vision. In the long term, this form of perceptual training can be evaluated for its benefits in reading rehabilitation for patients with AMD. Chapter One provides an overview of the thesis. The remainder of the thesis contains three related sections.;Chapter Two deals with developing an optimized training protocol for peripheral reading. Based on the study of alternative training protocols, practice on a character-based task (either a reading task, a trigram letter-recognition task, or a lexical-decision task), can significantly increase peripheral reading speed in normally-sighted young adults. Since the reading training method was most effective at enhancing peripheral reading speed, it is likely to yield the greatest improvement in reading speed for low-vision patients with central-field loss.;Chapter Three assesses the potential value for reading of vertically oriented lines of text for people with a central scotoma and a PRL lateral to the scotoma. Although vertical reading speed is typically slower than horizontal reading speed, vertical reading speed may be enhanced by perceptual learning and implemented as a form of low vision rehabilitation.;Chapter Four reports a study in which brain imaging (fMRI) was employed to locate the brain region responsible for slow reading speed in peripheral vision. The findings indicate that the brain region is located in the word form sensitive cortical regions rather than in earlier retinotopically mapped cortical regions (the brain regions in which cells are organized to map the visual field).;Together, these studies enhance our knowledge about the ability of peripheral vision to process text, and set the stage for future studies of reading in AMD. |
