Influence of Systematic Gaze Patterns in Navigation and Search Tasks with Simulated Retinitis Pigmentosa

People living with a degenerative retinal disease such as retinitis pigmentosa are oftentimes faced with difficulties navigating in crowded places and avoiding obstacles due to their severely limited field of view. The study aimed to assess the potential of different patterns of eye movement (scanning patterns) to (i) increase the effective area of perception of participants with simulated retinitis pigmentosa scotoma and (ii) maintain or improve performance in visual tasks. Using a virtual reality headset with eye tracking, we simulated tunnel vision of 20° in diameter in visually healthy participants (n = 9). Employing this setup, we investigated how different scanning patterns influence the dynamic field of view—the average area over time covered by the field of view—of the participants in an obstacle avoidance task and in a search task. One of the two tested scanning patterns showed a significant improvement in both dynamic field of view (navigation 11%, search 7%) and collision avoidance (33%) when compared to trials without the suggested scanning pattern. However, participants took significantly longer (31%) to finish the navigation task when applying this scanning pattern. No significant improvements in search task performance were found when applying scanning patterns.