A Foggy Start: Determining the Effect of Eyewear Fogging on Visual Task Performance
Abstract
To evaluate the effect of fogging of eyewear on task performance and to assess the effectiveness of an anti-fog coating, nine participants completed a visual search task under conditions simulating the two most likely occurrences of eyewear fogging. In the static environment, participants performed a visual search task while seated in front of a computer terminal. The eyewear was cold soaked in a cooler prior to being donned to simulate moving from a cold exterior to a warm interior environment. In the exercise environment, simulating exercising in the cold, participants performed the task in a cooled climatic chamber while pedaling a cycle ergometer. In this environment the eyewear was not cold soaked but was donned prior to entering the chamber. All participants performed the visual search task in static and exercise environments under three conditions: wearing no eyewear (bare-eye), wearing eyewear that had been treated with an anti-fog coating (coated eyewear) and wearing eyewear that had not been treated with anti-fog coating (uncoated eyewear). Each condition was video recorded and participants' subjective evaluations of the degree of fogging were collected at regular intervals throughout the task. Accuracy and speed of response were collected as performance measures on the visual search task. In the static environment fogging occurred on the uncoated eyewear immediately after it was removed from the cooler and continued for up to two minutes into the visual search task. Coated eyewear also fogged on six of the nine participants but for a much shorter period of time. Participants were significantly more accurate in performing the task while in the bare-eye and coated eyewear conditions compared to the uncoated condition. No effect of response time was evident but slowest responses were observed in the bare-eye condition. It is proposed that practice in performing the task was a contributing factor in this finding.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA385588
Entities
People
- J. M. Crebolder
- R. Sloan
- R. Tyler
Organizations
- Defence Research and Development Canada