ArticleScientific reports2018
Word Mode: a crowding-free reading protocol for individuals with macular disease.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- The inhibitory effect of word neighborhood size when reading with central field loss is modulated by word predictability and reading proficiency.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- Elevated Visual Crowding in CRB1-Associated Retinopathies: Understanding Functional Visual Deficits Using Child-Friendly Computerized Testing.Investigative ophthalmology & visual science · 2025Article
- Article
- Cost and benefit of parafoveal information during reading acquisition as revealed by finger movement patterns.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The temporal dynamics of visual crowding in letter recognition: Modulating crowding with alternating flicker presentations.Journal of vision · 2023Article
- A comparison of reading, in people with simulated and actual central vision loss, with static text, horizontally scrolling text, and rapid serial visual presentation.Journal of vision · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Central retinal loss through macular disease markedly reduces the ability to read largely because identification of a word using peripheral vision is negatively influenced by nearby text, a phenomenon termed visual crowding. Here, we present a novel peripheral reading protocol, termed Word Mode, that eliminates crowding by presenting each word in isolation but in a position that mimics its natural position in the line of text being read, with each new word elicited using a self-paced button press. We used a gaze-contingent paradigm to simulate a central scotoma in four normally-sighted observers, and measured oral reading speed for text positioned 7.5° in the inferior field. Compared with reading whole sentences, our crowding-free protocol increased peripheral reading speeds by up to a factor of seven, resulted in significantly fewer reading errors and fixations per sentence, and reduced both the critical print size and the text size required for spot reading by 0.2-0.3 logMAR. We conclude that the level of reading efficiency afforded by the crowding-free reading protocol Word Mode may return reading as a viable activity to many individuals with macular disease.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.