Reading: Effects of Contrast and Spatial Frequency1

Reading is a complex everyday task. Successful reading requires high-speed visual information processing. For several years, my colleagues and I have been studying visual factors in reading with two major goals in mind: to understand the roles played by sensory mechanisms in reading and to understand how visual impairment affects reading. In a typical study, we examine the effect of an important text variable (e.g. contrast) on reading by people with normal vision. Taking the normal data as a bench mark, we try to explain abnormalities in the performance of low-vision subjects.