Development of a search task for the measurement of peripheral visual acuity

Experimental evidence is discussed which indicates a relationship between peripheral visual acuity and search performance. It is suggested that use of this relationship can be made in assessing the relative extent of a person's peripheral visual field (visual lobe) for target detection when visually screening individuals for industrial inspection tasks. A card sorting task involving visual search was developed which was shown to be sensitive to subject differences in search speed (p<0.001). Speed of search correlated significantly with visual lobe area(r= -092, p <0.0l). Subjects' foveal acuities were not significantly related to search lime. Test-retest reliability for forms A and B of the card sorting task over a 1week period was r = 0.81 (p< 0.001).