Predicting optimal accommodative performance from measures of the dark focus of accommodation

Leibowitz and his colleagues found that accommodation rests at an intermediate distance that shows wide interindividual variation. They proposed that this intermediate dark focus is useful for correcting anomalous refractive errors, but this proposal was later questioned when different measurement techniques yielded discrepant dark focus values. The present study measured dark focus under two levels of visual attentiveness: (a) when performing an open-loop, active viewing task (aDF); and (b) when looking passively into darkness (pDF). These dark focus measures were then compared with an optimal accommodation distance that was derived from accommodative response functions in bright and dim luminance. The aDF measures were found to be more myopic (nearer) than the pDF measures and highly correlated with the optical accommodation distance. No significant relationship was found between pDF and optical accommodation distance. These findings confirm that measures of dark focus are affected by nonoptical aspects of the measurement technique; they also suggest that techniques that demand visual attention (aDF) yield dark focus values that are more useful for optimizing accommodation and potentially reducing fatigue in difficult situations.