The Effect of Refractive Lenses on Perceived Direction

The accuracy of directional localization with refractive lenses was determined by open-loop pointing for four myopic habitual contact lens wearers. The target was a single point of light at random locations (dark), or was embedded in a horizontal array of lights (light). In the dark, the regression slope of indicated vs actual target position was significantly less for spectacles than for contact lenses, as predicted from the prismatic effects of the spectacles. In the light, slopes for spectacles and contacts were not significantly different. These results suggest that spectacle wearers do not utilize eye position information in making direction judgments in the light.