Find out which is your dominant eye
Surely you have heard that we all have a dominant eye with which we see better than with the other, but have you ever wondered if that is true?
Well, according to vision experts, it is true that we have greater visual acuity with one eye than with the other, something very useful when we have to carry out activities that only require one of our eyes, such as using a microscope, a telescope and even when we take a picture with an analog camera. These are small actions we do on a day-to-day basis in which we can take advantage of our dominant eye. If you want to know what it is and how to find out what your dominant eye is, in this article we give you the tricks.
What is the dominant eye?
The dominant eye is the one with the greatest visual acuity, that is, the eye for which our brain will have preference and will fix its eyes when we have both eyes open.
The most recurrent is that if you are left-handed your dominant eye is the left, while if you are right-handed your dominant eye is the right. This is the general rule, but there are always specific cases and it may be that someone does not have one eye that dominates over the other.
How do I know which is my dominant eye?
Surely you are already thinking that if you are right-handed your dominant eye will be the right, but maybe it is not, so in Optics & University Audiology we want to provide you with some tricks so that you can check it yourself at home and leave doubts.
There are several types of ocular dominance, but to check which of the two is the dominant eye, you have to focus on motor and sensory dominance. The first one will tell us which of our two eyes is the most suitable to perform all kinds of activities that require aim, because it is the one that sees things first, while the dominant sensory eye is the one that sees things best. Usually both types of dominance coincide, but we have already said that there can be variations.
How to determine motor dominance
- Choose an object that you have at least two meters away and extend your arms while placing your hands in the shape of a triangle. Through the hole of your hands you must visualize the object you have chosen, as long as it does not exceed the dimensions of the space between your hands.
- Once you have focused your gaze on the object and are seeing it through the triangle you have formed with your hands, slowly bring your arms towards you while still staring at the object in question.
- When you already have your arms about 10 centimeters from your face, close and open both the left and right eye alternately trying not to move your hands or head.
- The dominant eye will be the one with which you continue to see the object framed through the triangle you have created with your hands. That will be the dominant motor eye, the most useful for practicing aiming sports, shooting a photograph with a camera or looking through a microscope.
How to determine sensory dominance
Sensory dominance is also very important because the sensory dominant eye is the one that gives us more information about the images we perceive. The sensory dominance test can be done through a clinical trial that looks at the effectiveness of both eyes. Even so, we can intuit that our sensory dominant eye will be the one that perceives colors with greater intensity and the one that lasts longer in a post-image, that is, the one that visualizes for the longest the figure that is seen after an exposure to a light source.
If you want to take the test to determine your sensory dominant eye, you will need glasses with a red filter, like the typical ones used to watch 3D movies, and do two very simple steps.
- With the same object you used to discover your dominant motor eye, stand at a distance of two meters and place the red filter on one of your eyes. It is important that if you usually wear prescription glasses, you do this exercise with them on.
- Repeat the same exercise in the other eye and see which of the two you see the colors with greater intensity. The one with which you see the most intense red color will be your sensory dominant eye.
In the visual examination, when we adapt multifocal lenses to correct presbyopia, we check to know which is the dominant eye, since it will be mainly responsible for focusing at distant distances and the non-dominant will help more in the focus of near or medium distances.
Is it possible that I don’t have a dominant eye?
As we have said, normally those people who are left-handed will have the left eye as the dominant eye, while for the right-handed it will be the right eye. However, there are exceptions where a left-handed person has his right eye as dominant for example or there may be cases in which both work equally and none stands out above the other.
Keep in mind that eye dominance can be affected by several factors, such as the graduation of each eye or if there is a cataract, for example. Sex and age can also influence, since depending on the age, eye dominance may not occur absolutely in one of the two eyes.
Now you know what the dominant eye is and surely you have already put into practice our tricks to find out which is yours: the left or the right? From today you can improve small actions of your day to day thanks to your dominant eye.