FOVEAL ACUITY, PERIPHERAL ACUITY AND SEARCH PERFORMANCE - A REVIEW

Some of the more important results from 30 years of research on foveal and peripheral acuity, visual search performance and the relationship s between them are summarised in this paper. The visual lobe area is a useful concept for representing peripheral acuity and has proven to b e important in predicting performance for visual search tasks. Differe nt approaches to measuring lobe area and experimental results relating peripheral acuity and visual search performance are summarised. Metho ds of measurement include full field mapping, eight-axis visual field mapping, four-, two- and one-axis lobe length measurement, and a card- sorting task. A brief review is also made of the various measures of s tatic and dynamic foveal acuities using different types of tasks, thei r applications and factors affecting acuity values.