Central retinal loss through macular disease markedly reduces the ability to read largely because identification of a word using peripheral vision is negatively influenced by nearby text, a phenomenon termed visual crowding. Here, we present a novel peripheral reading protocol, termed Word Mode, that eliminates crowding by presenting each word in isolation but in a position that mimics its natural position in the line of text being read, with each new word elicited using a self-paced button press. We used a gaze-contingent paradigm to simulate a central scotoma in four normally-sighted observers, and measured oral reading speed for text positioned 7.5° in the inferior field. Compared with reading whole sentences, our crowding-free protocol increased peripheral reading speeds by up to a factor of seven, resulted in significantly fewer reading errors and fixations per sentence, and reduced both the critical print size and the text size required for spot reading by 0.2-0.3 logMAR. We conclude that the level of reading efficiency afforded by the crowding-free reading protocol Word Mode may return reading as a viable activity to many individuals with macular disease.

中文翻译：

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文字模式：针对黄斑疾病患者的无拥挤阅读方案。

黄斑疾病导致的中央视网膜丧失显着降低了阅读能力，很大程度上是因为使用周边视觉识别单词会受到附近文本的负面影响，这种现象称为视觉拥挤。在这里，我们提出了一种新颖的外围阅读协议，称为“单词模式”，它通过单独呈现每个单词，但在模仿其在正在阅读的文本行中的自然位置的位置来消除拥挤，每个新单词都使用自定进度的引出按钮按下。我们使用凝视条件范式来模拟四个视力正常的观察者的中心暗点，并测量位于下视场 7.5° 的文本的口头阅读速度。与阅读整个句子相比，我们的无拥挤协议将外围阅读速度提高了七倍，导致每个句子的阅读错误和固定明显减少，并且将关键打印尺寸和现场阅读所需的文本尺寸减少了0.2-0.3 logMAR。我们得出的结论是，无拥挤阅读协议 Word 模式所提供的阅读效率水平可能会使阅读成为许多患有黄斑疾病的个体的可行活动。