The current study was to investigate whether myopia affected peripheral motion detection and whether the potential effect interacted with spatial frequency, motion speed, or eccentricity.
Seventeen young adults aged 22–26 years participated in the study. They were six low to medium myopes [spherical equivalent refractions −1.0 to −5.0 D (diopter)], five high myopes (<-5.5 D) and six emmetropes (+0.5 to −0.5 D). All myopes were corrected by self-prepared, habitual soft contact lenses. A four-alternative forced-choice task in which the subject was to determine the location of the phase-shifting Gabor from the four quadrants (superior, inferior, nasal, and temporal) of the visual field, was employed. The experiment was blocked by eccentricity (20° and 27°), spatial frequency (0.6, 1.2, 2.4, and 4.0 cycles per degree (c/d) for 20° eccentricity, and 0.6, 1.2, 2.0, and 3.2 c/d for 27° eccentricity), as well as the motion speed [2 and 6 degree per second (d/s)].
Mixed-model analysis of variances showed no significant difference in the thresholds of peripheral motion detection between three refractive groups at either 20° (
There was no significant difference between the three refractive groups in peripheral motion detection. However, lower motion detection thresholds were associated with higher myopia, mostly for low spatial frequency targets, at 20° in myopic viewers.