Abstract
The steady, world-wide increase in myopia prevalence in children over the past decades has raised concerns. As an early intervention for axial-length-related myopia, correcting lenses have been developed (such as Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segment (DIMS) lenses), which have been shown to be effective in slowing myopia progression. Beyond this direct effect, however, it is not known whether such lenses also affect other aspects important to the wearer, such as eye fatigue, and how such effects may differ across age, as these lenses so far are typically only tested with adolescents. In the present work, we therefore investigated perceived fatigue levels according to lens type (normal vs DIMS) and age (adolescents vs adults) in a demanding visual search task ("Finding Wally") at two difficulty levels (easy vs difficult). Whereas age and difficulty did not result in significant differences in eye fatigue, we found a clear reduction of fatigue levels in both age groups when wearing the correcting lenses. Hence, the additional accommodation of these lens types may result in less strain in a task requiring sustained eye movements at near viewing distances.
Highlights
It is estimated that by 2050 the global myopia prevalence will be around 5 billion people [1]
Given the large number of trials (n = 840), ShapiroWilk tests indicated violation of normality for all variables, skewness and kurtosis were within ±2 for Accuracy and Eye Fatigue
Accuracy showed a significant main effect of age group (F(1,40) = 5.63, p = .023, partial η2 = .64) with adults having an average of 10% higher accuracy
Summary
It is estimated that by 2050 the global myopia prevalence will be around 5 billion people [1]. A non-life-threatening disorder, myopia has far-reaching consequences in the health sector resulting in significant social and economic spending on both personal and national levels [2]. One of the major optical sources of myopia stems from an excessive elongation of the eye’s axial length that happens during childhood growth [1, 3, 4], leading to decreased visual acuity at far viewing distances. Several clinical interventions have been developed with the aim of preventing or slowing the progression of myopia in children; broadly, these can be subdivided into topical. Other researchers have argued [5,6,7,8] that societies’ increase in near-work activities and an accompanying indoor lifestyle is associated with increased risk of myopia—a trend that has only been exacerbated in the COVID-19 pandemic with extended lockdowns, home-schooling, reduced outdoor activities, and the everincreasing use of electronic devices for communication.
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