A vision test? Are you having a laugh my friend? Well, someone's got to do it :)

When I first saw this task I thought of making one of those stupid eye vision tests but with Nintendo characters getting smaller and smaller, etc.

But then I thought about how people could train themselves to have better eyesight by not having the aid of things like glasses, contact lenses etc. This is plausible! I thought. Long and hard.

So I came up with a test that examines how good your peripheral vision is. This neat concept refers to your vision that is out of the usual range (hence the 'corner of your eye', when people say that they mean they have used their peripheral vision skills).

Here's the science: in your eye there are two types of receptor cells: Rod cells and cone cells. Rod cells are pathetic at distinguishing colour in peripheral vision, but can detect motion. Cone cells actually produce the colour recognition and are quite active in bright light. Something I found quite interesting was that peripheral vision is actually purposely designed for escaping predators, because of the natural characteristics that the receptor cells have.

Lots of people I know boast that they have good peripheral vision (including myself :P). You could say that it is a skill that has been built up over one's life. Well, it could actually be part of doing things like driving, playing various sports, being a ninja, etc. Any time where you know you have to react to something, peripheral vision becomes heightened. But I'm not going to test anyone with a baseball bat just yet. That's when Vision Test Pt. II comes in :D

Okay, so the test. I knew that I'd have to test myself first to get the levels correct. So what I done was I placed a stool in the middle of my living room and focused on the plant in front of me (which is about +/- 5 degrees off I thought). It looked alright. So next, the props.

I practically decided what I was going to do as I clicked on this task. I came up with three different areas of peripheral sensory:

Colour - I will hold up five different colours (Red, Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple) and ask the 'patient' what colour they can see.

Precision - I will hold up five different numbers from the range 0-10, differing from patient to patient.

Motion movement - I don't know what to do for this apart from waving my hand around. Maybe use this to measure what degrees the extreme limit to one's peripheral vision is.

So there you have it - three simple tasks that will be repeated again for the other side. This should last around five minutes. I didn't want to take any pictures with flash, because it might affect the eye sight. So during the test, nothing was taken.

First to test my evil vision test was my 14-year old brother. He just got back from school, and he wanted to go out. But I constricted him to the stool in true evil fashion... ahah. Because we recently got Wii Fit, he thought it was like that so it got easier from that point onwards. The colour test he done okay on, he got the yellow and the green (which are bright post it notes) but muddled up the rest. He done exactly the same thing for both sides. The precision test was terrible... he got about 2/10 right, and one of which was because he looked. What a cheat. He got the 8 and the 4, which was alright I suppose. And finally the motion movement test. My brother enjoyed this one the most. I didn't actually use my hand - I used a torch. His range was from looking ahead to about 65 degrees, which is quite impressive. He stepped off and went to the park.

My next target was my mum - being in her early forties her eyesight wasn't that great :P She was rather intrigued about this, she was like: "Chris, you don't do things like this often, what's gotten into you?" I just replied: "Lol". Anyway, the colour test was surprisingly successful. She got 4/5 for her right side but 3/5 for her left side. Maybe this was due to the fact that her right eye was worse, maybe polarity is reversed if you know what I mean? Better left eye means better right eye peripheral vision etc. The precision test was done better than my brother, but still poor. She got 5/10, which actually isn't that bad if you think about it, half marks. The last test was interesting. My mum was saying about how she had a test like this on the NHS. "You probably haven't had that for about 20 years", I replied. Anyway, she got a peripheral score of 80 degrees, which is bloody high.

So my conclusion - can you keep doing this test to ensure better peripheral vision? Is it affected by age, previous disease or skills that you have had to learn? I'm sure I'll find out :)