A Mirror-recorder for Photographing the Compensatory Movements of Closed Eyes.
Raymond Dodge · Journal of Experimental Psychology · 1921
Any project that involves photographic records of reactive compensatory eye-movements, as in the ocular nystagmus of rotation, is embarrassed by a unique technical difficulty that has hitherto been prohibitive.In order to register eyemovements that are pure compensations, free from visual stimuli and visual controls, the records must be taken either in the dark or from closed eyes.Both conditions make photographic technique somewhat difficult.Photography in the dark seems quite impracticable.Photographing the position of the eye through closed eyelids for a long time seemed no less so.Neither the dark nor closed eyelids are necessarily prohibitive.But for many years the technical difficulties prevented our completing the description of the five types of eye-movements in the horizontal meridian plane of the field of regard which was begun in 1903.x Discussing the reactive compensatory eye-movements in that paper, in contradistinction from the coordinate compensatory, I was obliged to say: "Unfortunately, the essential condition of the phenomenon in pure form is that the eyes be closed.This, however, precludes a quantitative investigation by any of the methods at hand."The first photographic records of the reactive compensatory eye-movements were taken by Holt. 2 He avoided the technical difficulties by frankly