Effects of luminance on the visual acuity of strabismic and anisometropic amblyopes and optically blurred normals

Evidence is accumulating to suggest fundamental differences between strabismic and anisometropic amblyopia. We explored differences in these amblyopes by assessing the effects of luminance on optotype acuity, using targets that ranged from photopic to low mesopic levels. Our results show that reducing luminance has less of a detrimental effect on the acuity of strabismic than anisometropic amblyopic eyes. Furthermore, the effect of decreasing luminance on the acuity of optically blurred normal eyes mimicked the effect we found for anisometropic amblyopic eyes. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the fundamental deficit in anisometropic amblyopia is impaired resolution while in strabismic amblyopia the fundamental deficit is impaired spatial directionalization.