Helen M. Paulson

The ability of color defectives to judge signal lights at sea

Measures were made of the ability of color-defective men to judge correctly the colors of navigation lights (red, green, or white) presented to them at night under realistic sea conditions. Eighty-one color-defective men were employed; they were categorized as to type and degree of defect using a battery of five color-vision tests. While the average performance of the color-defective men was considerably poorer than that of 24 color normals, there were large individual differences within each category of defect. Attempts to account for these differences in performance by variations in acuity, intelligence, and motivation failed. The extent to which the data can be accounted for by modern color-vision theory is discussed.

Vision through Various Scuba Facemasks

The visual performance using five commercially avaible facemasks was compared. Measurements were made of visual fields, visual acuity, stereoacuity, hand-eye coordination, accuracy of distance estimates, and accuracy of size estimates at both near and far distances. In addition, the optical properties of the masks were measured and the susceptibility of each mask to fogging was tested. There were significant differences among the masks for every visual process tested. Some masks were superior for one purpose and inferior for another purpose. For example, the mask which had lenses designed to compensate for the optical distortions found under water improved size and distance estimates and hand-eye coordination, but degraded acuity and stereoacuity. The results were not expplained on the basis of differential susceptibility to fogging.