Reading and Visual Fatigue

A committee of well known scientists and educators, known as the Committee on Scientific Aids to Learning, financed a series of investigations of reading. These began in 1940 at Harvard University and Tufts College and were continued by one of the investigators at the University of Rochester. Special types of apparatus were developed for recording eye movements.

Modern industrial and educational processes place a tremendous burden on vision. Some physicians have even credited continuous, fatigue of the eyes with being the foundation of the "neurotic tendency" of our times. After a definition of visual fatigue the authors present their consideration of the factors involved in reading and the relation of these factors to fatigue. The technic of the experiments is described in detail, followed by a discussion and interpretation of the results. An excellent summary and conclusions provide the general reader with the true significance of the study.

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