Quantitative judgements and matching of subjective speed of apparent laser speckle flow induced by refractive defocus

The speed of laser speckles induced by refractive defocus was determined by means of the direct method of free magnitude estimation in combination with sensory verbal descriptors. Physical measures of angular velocities were obtained by matching a similar pattern under the viewer's control to the laser speckles for equal subjective velocity. Theoretical speckle speed was calculated from geometrical formulae proposed by Charman [7]. The velocity percept of apparent speckle motion was a monotonic function of the refractive power of the positive lenses added to the observer's eye, although it exhibited a tendency of levelling off at the greatest strength. The magnitude estimates of this motion percept were highly correlated with corresponding subjective judgements of the angular velocity of the real motion of the matched pattern. Theoretical velocity plotted against empirically obtained values of velocity through matching yielded a product moment correlation coefficient of 0.98 and a regression coefficient of 0.94 indicating a high internal and external validity of these measurements as well as the usefulness of speckle speed as a cue for voluntary changes of the crystalline lens of the eye.