I was inspired to make an entry today because I am noticing a particular lot of improvement in my vision today. It is very overt.
It's the feeling of taking control of the lazy eye and having simultaneous control of it, and my normal fixing eye. It's a foreign feeling, but it feels really good and I'm noticing quite a bit more information, which is nice.
I'm not sure why--is it because I changed light tube filters to Alpha Delta on Saturday? Incidentally, I figured out why they call it Alpha Delta, Mu Upsilon, and so on. Each filter is actually two filters. So each Greek letter represents a different color filter (Alpha is red, and Delta is yellow). Together they make a orange-ish red. Mu Delta is green-yellow. Mu Upsilon is green-blue.
Anyway, I'm enjoying my daily new vision. Now I'm starting to relax, and enjoy the process of gaining stereopsis. I'm no longer in a panicked rush because I know it's coming, and I get to relax (except when doing eye exercises) and watch new information coming in every day.
When I do light tube exercises, it just feels right, like I know what I'm doing now and I know what kinds of sensations I should follow. I've developed a binocular instinct if you will.
I have a weird theory. I think it's, in principle, possible to go from stereoblind to having stereoscopic vision without doing any vision therapy exercises. It's a certain way that you look through your eyes. It's tricky to know how to do it because it doesn't cause you to see any differently and there's no feedback, but by doing it, you're flexing the binocular muscle. If you keep doing it, you'll eventually have stereopsis.
The purpose of vision therapy exercises is to guide you toward the proper way of seeing. If you're sensitive and receptive to the guidance that VT is providing you, you should in theory, not need to do vision therapy very much and you'll gain stereopsis much more quickly than someone who unthinkingly does the workout and then forgets about it and goes on with his day.
Just a random thought.
I have a weird thought to add to your weird theory. I think that part of the principle of learning stereoscopic vision is learning the actual actual perception of stereoscopic depth as a new sense. It's like how deaf kids from birth are given cochlear implants and super confused at first until they learn how to interpret a bunch of noise as actual sounds, let alone voices with tonal content. Sometimes I have moments that seem like a random close object hits me in the face because I instantly went from not perceiving its depth to perceiving it stereoscopically (I think.). It's a strange sensation, and unless you are training yourself to "feel" it your mind will probably ignore it because it's too strange and it would be more efficient to ignore it and rely on trusted old habits than integrate an entirely new dimension. So maybe there is feedback but it's difficult to detect at first. It's like how it's easier not to learn to read sheet music or French because it takes way more effort to pay attention to an entirely new system of thinking and perceiving. I think it takes a degree of cleverness to be able to set the conditions just so there are enough stereo depth cues to pay attention to and once one learns what those feel like, it's easier to look for those feelings under other conditions as well. If for some reason one was able to learn how to control the eyes to evoke that feeling because they learned the new perceptions fairly quickly then it seems like those binocular cues made sense to them in a way they haven't for others. I have high hopes for the game Diplopia to be able to implement this principle in gameplay, so perhaps it'll provide us some evidence one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteThat's an excellent point--one which reminds me of the writings of Sue Barry when she talks about how stereo 3d cues are an entirely new *qualia*--so it takes a certain type of receptivity or cleverness in order to be able to intercept that new information in the right sort of way.
DeleteOf course, this has to happen when the visual input is just right. You'll never see be able to see in 3d stereo if your eyes are all crazy and wall-eyed. So it's probably a mix of knowing when the time is proper to prepare for the cognitive shift.
That's probably where it's particularly important to get all systems working in proper order--like getting at least eight hours of sleep, and having good stress management. It's my experience that emotional/mental health is important in learning things in general. So that principle would probably apply doubly if you're getting ready for a massive perceptual shift.
yeah, I agree that Diplopia sounds very interesting... mainly because it involves principles that have been implemented in clinical studies that have shown certain methods to be effective with vision therapy (such as providing a relatively stronger stimulus on the amblyopic eye, relative to the fixing eye). Our strabby Tetris doesn't have that. And it definitely worked for the programmer James Blaha. Heh, I just want it to come out!