Concordant eye movement and motion parallax asymmetries in esotropia

The role of eye movements in the perception of depth from motion was investigated in esotropia. Elevated motion parallax thresholds have been shown in strabismus [Thompson, A. M., & Nawrot, M. (1999). Abnormal depth perception from motion parallax in amblyopic observers. Vision Research, 39, 1407–1413] suggesting a global deficit in depth perception involving both stereopsis and motion. However, this motion parallax deficit in strabismus might be better explained by the role that eye movements play in motion parallax [Nawrot, M., & Joyce, L. (2006). The pursuit theory of motion parallax. Vision Research, 46, 4709–4725]. Esotropia is associated with asymmetric pursuit and optokinetic response eye movements [Demer, J. L., & von Noorden, G. K. (1988). Optokinetic asymmetry in esotropia. Journal of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, 25, 286–292; Schor, C. M., & Levi, D. M. (1980). Disturbances of small-field horizontal and vertical optokinetic nystagmus in amblyopia. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, 19, 851–864; Tychsen, L., & Lisberger, S. G. (1986). Maldevelopment of visual motion processing in humans who had strabismus with onset in infancy. The Journal of Neuroscience, 6, 2495–2508; [Westall, C. A., Eizenman, M., Kraft, S. P., Panton, C. M., Chatterjee, S., & Sigesmund, D. (1998). Cortical binocularity and monocular optokinetic asymmetry in early-onset esotropia. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, 39, 1352–1360.]. The first experiment demonstrates that the motion parallax deficit in esotropia mirrors the pursuit eye movement asymmetry: in the direction of normal pursuit, esotropic observers had normal depth from motion parallax. A second set of experiments, conducted in normal observers, demonstrates that this motion parallax deficit is not a secondary problem due to the retinal slip created by inadequate pursuit. These results underscore the role of pursuit eye movements in the perception of depth from motion parallax.