A population study of binocular function

•Performance distributions (n = 1060) for stereo acuity, dichotic masking and binocular rivalry.•Significant correlations between binocular traits.•Significant correlations with other visual traits, including contrast sensitivity and phorias.•Suggestive genetic associations, and a tentative significant genetic association with self-reported ability to see autostereograms.

As part of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of perceptual traits in healthy adults, we measured stereo acuity, the duration of alternative percepts in binocular rivalry and the extent of dichoptic masking in 1060 participants. We present the distributions of the measures, the correlations between measures, and their relationships to other psychophysical traits. We report sex differences, and correlations with age, interpupillary distance, eye dominance, phorias, visual acuity and personality. The GWAS, using data from 988 participants, yielded one genetic association that passed a permutation test for significance: The variant rs1022907 in the gene VTI1A was associated with self-reported ability to see autostereograms. We list a number of other suggestive genetic associations (p < 10−5).