AN OCULOMOTOR TEST TO MEASURE ALCOHOL IMPAIRMENT

Drunk driving continues to be one of the nation's most serious safety problems. On the premise that oculomotor control provides a quantitati ve measure that is very sensitive to alcohol impairment, an oculomotor test previously developed as a portable hand-held Viewmaster viewer w ith specially designed grating patterns as images was used to stress t he oculomotor system. Test scores decreased with increased alcohol imp airment along with a large dependence on individual lateral phoria sco res. Unfortunately, there was a large amount of interindividual variab ility, which may limit use of the test for the population at large unl ess other individual characteristics are included.