Useful field of view test performance throughout adulthood in subjects without ocular disorders

Woutersen, Karlijn; van den Berg, Albert V.; Boonstra, F. Nienke; Theelen, Thomas; Goossens, Jeroen · 2018 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0196534

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Summary

This study investigates how Useful Field of View (UFOV) test performance changes throughout adulthood in subjects without ocular disorders. Previous research indicated an age-related decline in UFOV performance, which measures the time required to extract relevant visual information. However, those studies often relied on self-reported health or included participants with ocular pathologies, potentially confounding results. This research aimed to determine if UFOV decline persists in healthy eyes and whether elementary visual functions (visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, crowding) explain such changes. The study recruited 46 healthy adults aged 19.5 to 70.3 years. Participants underwent rigorous ophthalmological screening, including funduscopy, optical coherence tomography, and electrophysiological tests, to exclude ocular and neurological disorders. Five participants were excluded due to severe pathology or testing issues, leaving a final sample of 41 subjects. All participants received age-appropriate refractive correction. The researchers measured performance on the three UFOV subtasks: central identification (UFOV1), central identification with peripheral localization (UFOV2), and the same task with distractors (UFOV3). They also assessed near and far visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and crowding intensity. Statistical analyses included linear and quadratic regression models to examine relationships between age and visual performance, using bootstrapping for robustness. The results showed that subjects performed exceptionally well, achieving better scores than those reported in previous studies that did not thoroughly screen for ocular health. There were no significant relationships between age and elementary visual functions, nor between age and performance on UFOV1 or UFOV2. However, a significant age-related decline was observed in UFOV3 performance ($R^2 = 0.36, p < 0.001$). This decline in the distractor condition was unrelated to performance on the elementary visual function tasks. The data indicated that while central identification and simple peripheral localization remain stable in healthy adults, the ability to filter distractors deteriorates with age. The findings suggest that age-related declines in UFOV performance are not solely driven by ocular pathology or basic visual deficits like acuity or contrast sensitivity. Instead, the decline appears specific to tasks requiring the suppression of irrelevant information, implicating cognitive or attentional mechanisms rather than purely sensory ones. This distinction is significant for understanding age-related visual difficulties in daily activities, such as driving, and highlights the importance of rigorous ophthalmological screening in vision research to isolate cognitive from sensory contributions.

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• useful field of view