Eye dominance or ocular dominance is the tendency to prefer visual input from one eye, and it was first discussed by Rosenbach in 1903 (Porac and Coren 1976). It refers to the eye used preferentially in different forms of visual alignment such as looking through a telescope and microscope, shooting, and other such monocular activities (Reiss and Reiss 1997). It was believed that when using the dominant eye, images may appear larger (Porac and Coren 1984) and clearer (Porac and Coren 1982) and also that the stabilized retinal images fade slower compared to the nondominant eye. However, the dominant eye is not necessarily the eye with better visual acuity (Kommerell et al. 2003) and some studies show that there was no association between the size of the object and the eye dominance (McManus and Tomlinson 2004).
Regarding the connection between the dominant eye and the dominant hand, there have been conflicting results so far. Some studies done in athletes suggested that the ocular...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References and Readings
Cheng, C. Y., Yen, M. Y., Lin, H. Y., Hsia, W. W., & Hsu, W. M. (2004). Association of ocular dominance and anisometropic myopia. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 45(8), 2856–2860.
Handa, T., Mukuno, K., Uozato, H., Niida, T., Shoji, N., Minei, R., ..., Shimizu, K. (2004). Ocular dominance and patient satisfaction after monovision induced by intraocular lens implantation. Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery, 30(4), 769-774.
Horton, J. C., & Hocking, D. R. (1998). Effect of early monocular enucleation upon ocular dominance columns and cytochrome oxidase activity in monkey and human visual cortex. Visual Neuroscience, 15(02), 289–303.
Ito, M., Shimizu, K., Kawamorita, T., Ishikawa, H., Sunaga, K., & Komatsu, M. (2013). Association between ocular dominance and refractive asymmetry. Journal of Refractive Surgery, 29(10), 716–720.
Khan, A. Z., & Crawford, J. D. (2001). Ocular dominance reverses as a function of horizontal gaze angle. Vision Research, 41(14), 1743–1748.
Kommerell, G., Schmitt, C., Kromeier, M., & Bach, M. (2003). Ocular prevalence versus ocular dominance. Vision Research, 43(12), 1397–1403.
McManus, I. C., & Tomlinson, J. (2004). Objects look different sizes in the right and left eyes. Laterality Asymmetries of Body Brain and Cognition, 9(3), 245–265.
Olga Seijas, Pilar Gómez de Liaño, Rosario Gómez de Liaño, Clare J. Roberts, Elena Piedrahita, Ester Diaz, (2007) Ocular Dominance Diagnosis and Its Influence in Monovision. American Journal of Ophthalmology 144(2):209–216.e1
Porac, C., & Coren, S. (1975). Is eye dominance a part of generalized laterality. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 40(3), 763–769.
Porac, C., & Coren, S. (1976). The dominant eye. Psychological Bulletin, 83(5), 880.
Porac, C., & Coren, S. (1982). The relationship between sighting dominance and the fading of a stabilized retinal image. Perception & Psychophysics, 32(6), 571–575.
Porac, C., & Coren, S. (1984). Monocular asymmetries in vision: A phenomenal basis for eye signature. Canadian Journal of Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie, 38(4), 610.
Reiss, M., & Reiss, G. (1997). Ocular dominance: Some family data. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 2(1), 7–16.
Wiesel, T. N., Hubel, D. H., & Lam, D. M. K. (1974). Autoradiographic demonstration of ocular-dominance columns in the monkey striate cortex by means of transneuronal transport. Brain Research, 79(2), 273–279.
Wright, K. W., Guemes, A., Kapadia, M. S., & Wilson, S. E. (1999). Binocular function and patient satisfaction after monovision induced by myopic photorefractive keratectomy. Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery, 25(2), 177–182.
Yang, Z., Lan, W., Liu, W., Chen, X., Nie, H., Yu, M., & Ge, J. (2008). Association of ocular dominance and myopia development: A 2-year longitudinal study. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 49(11), 4779–4783.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Suryadevara, U., Woods, A.J. (2018). Eye Dominance. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_9106
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_9106
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57110-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57111-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences