Visual Neuroscience

A Preliminary Study on Normalized Pattern-Reversal

Peripheral Field SSVEPs as a Potential Objective Indicator
of Useful Field of View Performance
Sheng Tong Lin1,2 and Lian Kheng Tey2
1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore
2
Defence Medical and Environmental Research Institute, DSO National Laboratories, Singapore

Correspondence: Sheng Tong Lin, 27
Medical Drive #11-00, Singapore
117510, Singapore;
shengtong@u.nus.edu,
lshengto@dso.org.sg.
Submitted: October 18, 2015
Accepted: April 26, 2016
Citation: Lin ST, Tey LK. A preliminary
study on normalized pattern-reversal
peripheral field SSVEPs as a potential
objective indicator of useful field of
view performance. Invest Ophthal-
mol Vis Sci. 2016;57:3248–3256.
DOI:10.1167/iovs.15-18439
PURPOSE. Currently, the test for useful field of view (UFOV) typically relies on subjective
feedback for detecting peripheral targets while attending to a central target. Steady-state visual
evoked potential (SSVEP) recorded from the occipital region of the brain has been frequently
used as an objective alternative to replace subjective responses. Our aim was to investigate if a
short screening test can approximate UFOV performance objectively.
METHODS. We recorded SSVEPs during a simple peripheral task and a UFOV task with and
without distractors as well as 30-second offline SSVEPs for eight participants. In all tasks, a
peripheral annulus ring of checkered reversal pattern was concurrently presented to the
participants to elicit SSVEPs.
RESULTS. Orthogonal linear regression analysis found that normalized SSVEP during the UFOV
task is predictive of peripheral target detection accuracy (F(1,6) ¼ 16.250, P < 0.01, n ¼ 8)
for a task with peripheral distractors. However, this is not the case for a task without
distractors (F(1,6) ¼ 0.397, P ¼ 0.552), possibly due to near-perfect accuracy across most
participants. Offline normalized SSVEPs also only predicted the peripheral target detection
accuracy (F(1,6) ¼ 26.799, P < 0.01) for the UFOV task with peripheral distractors.
CONCLUSIONS. Difficult peripheral target detection with distractors is required to differentiate
UFOV performance in healthy young adults. The results suggested that offline normalized
SSVEPs elicited by 30 seconds of pattern-reversal checkered annulus from the peripheral
vision field can identify individuals with good UFOV performance under the stress of a
difficult peripheral task.
Keywords: SSVEP, UFOV, EEG

ypically, the current means of assessing attention is to put
T individuals through psychophysical tests. These tests rely
on subjective feedback and critical reaction-time response;
hence time must be set aside for multiple trials to gather
accurate averages and to minimize effects of noise on data.
When a test has to be repeated to confirm results, the lengthy
testing time multiplies with each repetition. Also, a subjective
test tends to rely on the motivational level of the individual. In
the case in which a subjective test is used to select suitable
candidates for sports or military vocation, those mandated by
rules to participate may respond suboptimally to avoid good
scores while those who are keen but are not confident about
passing the test may try guessing tricks to achieve high scores.
Recruiters would prefer shorter testing times while avoiding
subjectivity by having objective markers.
In this study, the aim was to investigate steady-state visual
evoked potential (SSVEP) as a neurosignal marker that can
quickly and objectively assess individuals for their attentional
span around their primary gaze, or, to use a more recognized
term, the useful field of view (UFOV). Useful field of view is
defined as the visual area from which one captures visual
information with a single glance without any eye movement.1–4
It indicates attentional performance toward the peripheral visual
field while visual information is concurrently processed from a
fixation point. It has been found that driving accidents are
correlated with poorer UFOV in elderly drivers.3,4 On the other
hand, SSVEP is the neuronal signal typically from the occipital
brain region that oscillates at the same frequency as the flicker/
flashing rate of the visual stimulus presented, and this oscillation
is modulated by how and where visual attention is deployed.5
The SSVEPs can be identified by recording brain signals using
electroencephalography (EEG) and then transforming the
recorded data into the frequency domain where SSVEP is seen
as an increase in amplitude or power in the same frequency as
the stimulus presentation frequency.5,6 Relationships between
SSVEP and psychophysical assessment of attention have often
been studied. Mishra et al.7 found that action game players have
increased suppression of SSVEP amplitudes to unattended
peripheral stimuli. Many other effects of attention phenomena
in modulating SSVEP have also been studied.8–12 Not surprising-
ly, objective feedback using SSVEP have become potential
objective assessments for retinal functions,13 visual acuity,14
amblyopia,15 stereoscopic vision,16 binocular rivalry,17–19 and
fatigue.20 In the past two decades, frequency-tagging technique
for SSVEPs has been used to study localized attention.21–24 This
technique requires the visual stimulus of interest to flash at a
specific frequency; hence the stimulus is said to be ‘‘tagged’’
with a frequency. The amplitude of SSVEP is modulated by

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 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
FIGURE 1. A single trial illustration for experiment 1.
attention to the flashing stimulus regardless of whether eye gaze
is directed to the stimulus or not.23,24 Consequently, many
studies have used changes in SSVEPs as the neuronal response
during experiments in place of or to support the occurrence of
specific subjective responses.21–24
While frequency tagging provides an excellent objective
alternative to subjective responses in studying overt and covert
attention, it is not the optimal way to reduce psychophysical
testing time. Perhaps one of the ways to use SSVEPS objectively
and at the same time reduce testing time is to look at offline
SSVEPs for their potential to approximate attentional perfor-
mance in actual psychophysical testing, that is, as a fast
screening tool. This satisfies the ideal requirements of shorter
testing time and objectivity. Thus this preliminary study
specifically examined a screening task that is a shorter and
reduced version of an experimental task that elicits the
relevant SSVEP for predicting UFOV performances.
The approach is to first identify UFOV task(s) that can show
differences in UFOV performance between individuals and at
the same time contains a flashing stimulus that elicits SSVEPs
effectively. To do so, we designed experimental paradigms
with a pattern-reversal annulus ring covering only the
peripheral visual field to collect peripheral field SSVEP levels.
Since SSVEPs are indicative of attentional resources and UFOV
is about the extent of ‘‘spotlight’’ of attention, hypothetically,
SSVEPs stimulated by pattern-reversal stimulus at or near the
peripheral regions of this spotlight should carry information
about the outer boundary of the attentional field, in a way
similar to frequency tagging. Hence, we distributed peripheral
stimuli just outside this annulus to collect psychophysical data
to verify if accuracy in detecting peripheral stimuli could be
predicted by this peripheral field SSVEP. If an association
between performance and SSVEPs could be demonstrated,
then one could extract the relevant elements of the
experiment task to design a screening task capable of
estimating UFOV performance.
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METHODS
Eight healthy participants (6 males, 2 females, ages 18–37)
with vision correctable to 6/6 for both far and near in both
eyes were recruited. The research protocols were consistent
with the 2008 Declaration of Helsinki and all participants gave
informed consent before the experiments. The experiments
were conducted using a 120-Hz light-emitting diode (LED)
monitor (Asus VG278HR; ASUSTeK Computer, Inc., Taipei,
Taiwan) with a typical computer equipped with a GTX 570
Nvidia (Santa Clara, CA, USA) graphics card. The monitor
screen was positioned 70 cm from the participant’s eyes. A
commercial off-the-shelf EEG system (ASA LAB waveguard64;
ANT-Neuro, Enschede, The Netherlands) was used to record
brain signals noninvasively by placing the sensors on the scalp
at electrode positions O1, O2, and Oz of the occipital region
according to the international 20–20 system standard, refer-
enced to M1 and M2 positions on the mastoid. These electrode
positions have been previously demonstrated to collect strong
SSVEPs.25–27 All electrodes attained an impedance level of 10
kX or less before the start of the experiments. All participants
completed the following four experiments, and each partici-
pant was familiarized using 10 trials of each experiment prior
to the commencement of the experiment.
Experiment 1: Baseline Peripheral Attentional
Task
The purpose of this task was to ensure that participants had
good covert attention to the peripheral visual field to begin
with. Each trial consisted of a baseline phase and an activity
phase (Fig. 1). During the baseline phase, participants were
asked to fixate on a 0.83-Hz blinking cross (0.48 visual angle in
size, 100 ms on, 1100 ms off) at the center of a gray screen.
Around the blinking cross was an annulus ring of checkered
pattern at 7.5 reversals/s (each checkered box ¼ 1.58). The
 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
FIGURE 2. A single trial illustration for experiment 2.
mean illuminance of the checkered pattern was 150 cd/m2.
The thickness of the ring spanned between 3.58 and 78 from
the fixation cross center, leaving a center gray zone extending
from the fixating point to the inner edge of the ring. The
baseline phase lasted for 10 seconds, followed by the activity
phase, which was the same as the baseline phase except for
two aspects. Firstly, just outside and around the annulus ring
were eight equally distributed small peripheral rings (1.48
visual angle in size). Only one of these circles was randomized
to be filled black for 100 ms (onset of peripheral stimulus)
every 1.2 seconds in synchrony with the fixation cross.
Secondly, the activity phase was randomized to last for 16 to
32 seconds to allow sufficient time to adapt to the peripheral
stimuli. The end of the activity phase was indicated by a white-
noise screen, which was presented for 2 seconds; then
participants had to indicate which one of the peripheral
circles last seen was filled black by pressing a response button
corresponding to the peripheral circle position (e.g., numeric
keypad number 1 ¼ bottom left circle, 9 ¼ top right circle). The
purpose was to exclude anticipatory deployment of attention
to the periphery. Participants were told to hold their blink
during the baseline and activity phase but were encouraged to
blink to their satisfaction during the time when they made
their response for the peripheral target after the white noise.
Participants were also told to take their time to make this
response so as to have ample time for blinking and sufficient
rewetting of their eyes. Scores were recorded as the
percentage of correct responses for the peripheral stimulus
that occurred just before the white-noise onset. There were a
total of 20 trials. An eye tracker (SMI RED 250; SensoMotoric
Instruments Gmb, Teltow, Germany) was used in this study to
ensure that participants’ eyes were fixating on the central
stimulus. Trial results were discarded if a subject was found to
fixate beyond 18 away from the central stimulus during the
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entire trial or when a blink occurred during the last 5 seconds
of the baseline or activity phase.
Experiment 2: Central–Peripheral Dual Task
The purpose of this task was to investigate the participant’s
ability to direct simultaneous attention to both central and
peripheral stimulus. In other words, it measured the likelihood
of detecting a target at a given eccentricity while attending to a
central stimulus, thus assessing the breadth of allocated
attention in space (i.e., UFOV performance). The trial design
was the same as for experiment 1 except that during activity
phase, the center fixating stimulus was a small circular ring,
0.1678 (10 arcmin) in size (Fig. 2). The circular ring presented a
0.0838 (5 arcmin) broken gap every 1.2 seconds in synchrony
with the peripheral stimulus onset. The presentation of the gap
was randomized to occur at either the up, down, left, or right
part of the circular ring. The participant had to actively
respond in real time to the gap direction using keyboard arrow
buttons, while response to the peripheral stimulus occurred
after the white noise when each trial ended. There were a total
of 20 trials. The UFOV performance scores were recorded as
the percentage of correct responses for the peripheral stimulus
that occurred just before the white-noise onset. Note that trial
results were excluded from score calculations if a participant
did not make a correct response to the last central stimulus
during its simultaneous onset with the last peripheral stimulus
just before the white noise.
Experiment 3: Central–Peripheral Dual Task With
Active Distractors
The purpose of this task was to investigate that participant’s
ability to perform a central–peripheral attention task in the
presence of peripheral distractors. The trial design was the
 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
FIGURE 3. A single trial illustration for experiment 3.
same as for experiment 2 except that during the activity phase,
extra distractors between the peripheral circles in the form of
black spots (1.48 visual angle in size) were presented along
with the onset of peripheral stimulus (Fig. 3).
Experiment 4: Single-Trial Central Task
In this experiment, there was only one trial, consisting of three
phases instead of two. The first phase was the ‘‘empty’’ phase
with a central blinking cross identical to those used in the
baseline phase against an empty gray background without a
checkered annulus. The second phase was the baseline phase,
exactly the same as in the previous three experiments. The
third phase was the activity phase, exactly the same as the
activity phase in experiment 2 except that there was no
peripheral stimulus. Hence, all phases had no peripheral task.
All phases lasted for a fixed 10 seconds each. The purpose was
to examine if the task could be an effective screening method
for producing SSVEPs that could predict psychophysical
accuracies in experiments 1 to 3.
Data Processing
The raw signal data from O1, O2, and Oz channels underwent
noise removal and band pass between 1 and 40 Hz using the
zero-phase Hamming-windowed sinc Finite Impulse Response
(FIR) filters28 from the EEGLAB toolbox (Version 13.1.1) for
MATLAB R2013b (The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA, USA). For
each channel and for each experiment, the last 5-second
filtered data before the end of baseline phase were selected
and transformed into frequency domain from which 7.5-Hz
neural oscillation power (in dB ¼ 10Log10[lV2]) was obtained.
The same procedure was done for the activity phase in each
experiment. Then the obtained power was averaged across all
three channels in their respective phases and experiments. The
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normalized SSVEP (nSSVEP) power for each experiment was
calculated by taking the average 7.5-Hz power of the
accumulated activity phase minus its accumulated preceding
baseline phase’s power of the same frequency. Statistical
analyses on psychophysical and nSSVEPs were conducted
using GraphPad Prism 7.0 (La Jolla, CA, USA).
RESULTS
All participants fixated within 18 away from the stimulus center
in all trials, and no blinks during the last 5-second window
during the baseline and activity phases (where SSVEP signals
were used for processing) were detected by the eye tracker. All
participants attained a perfect score for responses to the last
central stimulus in experiments 2 and 3 during their
simultaneous onset with the last peripheral stimulus before
the white noise; hence no trials were excluded. In each of
experiments 1 to 3, the activity phase lasted for an average of
24 seconds.
Behavioral Results
Responses to central stimuli were consistent with good central
fixation behavior for all participants in this preliminary study.
Hence, all correct responses here were simplified to consider
only correct responses to peripheral stimulus. On the other
hand, accuracy scores differed between different experiments
for response to peripheral stimuli/targets.
Figure 4 shows the percentage accuracy for peripheral
targets for each experiment. All participants scored nearly
perfect if not perfect in experiments 1 and 2, except for one
who scored 70% in experiment 2. The accuracy scores started
to spread within the participants in experiment 3, where the
task difficulty was the greatest with the peripheral distractors.
Repeated measures ANOVA with Greenhouse-Geisser correc-
 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
FIGURE 4. Percentage accuracy for peripheral targets in experiments 1
to 3 for (a) individual and (b) group mean. Error bar: SE.
tion indicated a significant difference in percentage correct
for peripheral targets among the experiments (F(1.122,
7.855) ¼ 32.471, P < 0.01). A post hoc test with Bonferroni
correction revealed that there were significant differences
only between experiment 1 and experiment 3 (mean
FIGURE 5. Mean normalized SSVEPs in experiments 1 to 3. Error bar: SE.
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differences ¼ 0.544, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.257,
0.831], P < 0.01) and experiments 2 and 3 (mean differences
¼ 0.5, 95% CI [0.224, 0.776], P < 0.01). There were no
significant differences between experiments 1 and 2 (mean
differences ¼ 0.044, 95% CI [0.037, 0.124], P ¼ 0.4). The
analysis suggested that experiments 1 and 2 were easily
accomplished and exhibited near-ceiling effects for all
participants except one. Hence, these two experiments did
not show difference in performance between the sampled
normal individuals, in contrast to experiment 3, which
showed a spread of performance differences between
individuals. It was also noted that the top three performers
in this experiment were a semiprofessional volleyball player, a
competitive basketball player, and a frequent video gamer
(role-playing game [RPG] player), respectively, in descending
order of top scores, while the rest of the participants were
office workers with negligible engagement in sports and
video games.
Repeated measures ANOVA indicated no significant differ-
ence in nSSVEPs between the experiments (F(2,14) ¼ 0.607, P
¼ 0.559). Figure 5 shows the mean values of nSSVEP for
experiments 1 to 3. However, looking at the small sample size
here and the high variance observed in Figure 5, there is a
possibility of decreasing nSSVEPs with increasing stimulus
difficulties given a case of low statistical power. Nevertheless,
until proven with a larger sample size, the difference in
nSSVEPs between experiments 2 and 3 seems to be small if
even existent.
Regression Analysis Results
Orthogonal linear regression (Deming regression) and Pearson
correlation analyses were done to study the relationship
between peripheral target accuracies and the corresponding
nSSVEPs for each experiment (Fig. 6).
Regression analysis showed a significant relationship
between target accuracies in experiment 3 and its nSSVEPs
(F(1,6) ¼ 16.250, P < 0.01), and their correlation coefficient, r
¼ 0.854, indicates a strong positive relationship. There was no
significant relationship and correlation found between the
accuracy and nSSVEPs for experiment 1 (F(1,6) ¼ 0.065, r ¼
0.103, P ¼ 0.808) and experiment 2 (F(1,6) ¼ 0.397, r ¼ 0.249,
P ¼ 0.552). It was also noted that the previously mentioned
top three performers had nSSVEPs larger than the rest of the
participants.
The strong relationship between nSSVEPs and behavioral
performance in experiment 3 triggers potential questions. If
nSSVEPs during a dual task with distractors are indeed a
 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
FIGURE 6. Percentage accuracy versus normalized SSVEPs in experi-
ment 1 (a), 2 (b), and 3 (c).
strong indicator of performance and there is a high chance
that different peripheral target difficulties (with or without
distractors) have a small effect on nSSVEP as seen in Figure 5
(experiment 2 versus experiment 3), can nSSVEPs derived
from a simple central stimulus task approximate dual-task
performance in experiment 3? And given the stability of the
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7.5-Hz SSVEPs strength here, can such a task be shortened to
a single trial to examine the possibility of a neuronal
screening procedure to quickly approximate UFOV perfor-
mance? Hence, experiment 4 was designed to investigate the
possibility of such a screening method.
Experiment 4 included an ‘‘empty’’ phase for comparison of
its SSVEPs with those in the baseline and activity phase. A very
significant difference in SSVEPs was observed between the
three phases (F(2,14) ¼ 6.802, P < 0.01). Note that this empty
phase was left out in experiments 1 to 3 to shorten their
testing duration. A post hoc test with Bonferroni correction
revealed that there were significant differences between
baseline phase and empty phase (mean differences ¼ 4.275,
95% CI [1.542, 7.007], P < 0.01). These results ensure that
SSVEPs were actively produced by the presentation of
checkered annulus rings during the baseline phase. There
were no significant differences between the activity phase and
empty phase (mean differences ¼ 2.645, 95% CI [1.95, 7.240],
P ¼ 0.344) or between activity phase and baseline phase (mean
differences ¼ 1.630, 95% CI [5.033, 1.773], P ¼ 0.534). The
differences between activity phase and the other two phases
are not significant, possibly due to the lack of statistical power
with the small sample size. The mean SSVEPs for all phases in
experiment 4 are shown in Figure 7.
The mean nSSVEP in the single-trial experiment 4 was 1.63
dB, and there were no significant differences between the
nSSVEPs from experiments 3 (Median ¼1.755) and 4 (Median
¼ 2.03), Wilcoxon test, z ¼ 0.0, P ¼ 0.99. This suggests that
nSSVEPs were not substantially affected by the occurrence of
peripheral targets. There is also the possibility that the nSSVEPs
between experiments 2 and 3 might be different by a small
percentage compared to the bigger percentage difference in
UFOV performance, but the significance cannot be determined
with the small sample size in this preliminary study.
Orthogonal linear regression analysis was conducted to
predict percentage accuracy of peripheral targets in all three
experiments based on the single-trial nSSVEP in experiment 4
(Fig. 8). Pearson correlation analysis was also done to study
the strength of the relationship between peripheral target
accuracies in experiments 1 to 3 and the nSSVEPs from
experiment 4.
Regression analysis showed a significant relationship
between experiment 1 and single-trial nSSVEP (F(1, 6) ¼
8.421, P ¼ 0.027), with r ¼ 0.764 indicating a strong positive
relationship. There was no significant relationship found
between percentage accuracy for experiment 2 and single-
trial nSSVEP (F(1,6) ¼ 1.341, r ¼ 0.427, P ¼ 0.291). A
significant relationship was found between percentage
accuracy in experiment 3 and single-trial nSSVEP (F(1,6) ¼
26.800, P < 0.01), with r ¼ 0.904 indicating a strong positive
relationship similar to what was shown in the regression
analysis in Figure 6c.
DISCUSSION
The first experiment demonstrated that all participants had
good peripheral vision to start with. The second experiment
demonstrated that all participants could perform the central–
peripheral task well. The third experiment increased periph-
eral task difficulty by throwing in peripheral distractors on
top of the central–peripheral dual attention task to examine
how individuals handle multiple pieces of information closer
to the boundaries of UFOV. The peripheral distractors in
experiment 3 were shown to be effective in increasing
peripheral task difficulty, providing a wider spread of
performance differences between participants. Noticeably,
the relationship between UFOV performance and nSSVEP in
 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
FIGURE 7. Mean SSVEPs for ‘‘empty,’’ baseline, and activity phase for experiment 4. Error bar: SE.
experiment 3 is driven by two clusters of data in the current
small sample size. Hence, at the moment, implementing
peripheral distractors in experiment 3 could differentiate the
participants’ performance into only two different levels.
Interestingly, peripheral task difficulty was not accompanied
by a corresponding significant difference in nSSVEPs when
comparing experiments 3 and 2 (with and without peripheral
distractor comparison) and experiments 3 and 4 (with and
without peripheral task comparison). This could be a case of
a small difference in nSSVEPs between experiments 2 and 4
compared to a larger difference in their UFOV performances;
this small difference could not reach significance due to small
sample size. Nevertheless, experiment 4, a case of an
extremely easy single-trial central task without any peripheral
task, produced nSSVEPs similar to those in experiment 3 in
identifying good UFOV performers over poorer ones for a
difficult peripheral task. This suggested that the single-trial
nSSVEP has applicable value as a screening tool. Another
strong contributing factor to the success of experiment 4 is
how the baseline was designed. Both SSVEPs were stimulated
and acquired during baseline phase (no task) and activity
phase (task). Taking the signal differences between them to
associate with effects arising from the corresponding task
performance is more meaningful than purely having an SSVEP
extracted and baselined to a controlled condition without any
checkered stimulus.
Another observation in experiment 3 was that most
nSSVEPs in this study were negative in value, and those with
good UFOV had positive nSSVEP values. This may be attributed
to the fact that good UFOV performers in experiment 3
maintained their attention better under the stress of a difficult
peripheral task, hence suffered less peripheral field SSVEP
attrition when executing central–periphery dual detection
during the activity phase. Given that SSVEP strength is
relatively stronger for attended stimuli,5,6 this explanation is
plausible.
The last observation worth noting concerns the top three
performers in experiment 3 (mentioned earlier) who included
two sportsmen and a video gamer. The effect of video gaming
has previously been demonstrated, with specific differences
in the SSVEPs of video gamers compared to normal
individuals.7,29 Krishnan et al.29 found that RPG players have
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increased SSVEPs for attended flashing stimuli accompanied
by an increased detection accuracy in a multiregion visual
search task. Hence, they are thought to be deploying some
form of attention enhancement. Findings for the participant
in experiment 3 who was a frequent RPG player seem to
concur with the findings of Krishnan et al.29 as her relatively
higher nSSVEP is accompanied by better peripheral detection
accuracy than most of the other participants. Unfortunately,
this preliminary study did not have participants who were
active/frequent action video game players. It is known that
action video gamers perform better in UFOV tasks,30,31 and
they probably ignore distractors better using a unique neural
strategy revealed by the suppression of SSVEPs from
irrelevant flashing stimuli.7 Therefore, it will certainly be of
interest to repeat experiments 3 and 4 with action video
gamers.
On the other hand, the influence of sports training on
SSVEPs is less well studied. Also, the findings in the literature
regarding better UFOV in ball sport athletes are rather
mixed. Matos and Godinho32 and Memmert et al.33 high-
lighted that UFOV for these sportsmen is not significantly
better than in nonsportsmen. Memmert et al. suggested that
the commercial version of the UFOV test is designed for
screening elderly persons for risk of driving accidents and
may not have the sensitivity to find differences between
sportsmen and nonsportsmen among healthy young individ-
uals. However, Schwab and Memmert34 found that sports
vision training improves UFOV for hockey players but did
not report sports performance to suggest any corresponding
improvement in actual sports activity. A study by Störmer et
al.27 suggested that individuals who are better at tracking
multiple flashing moving targets within their visual field
exhibit higher SSVEPs than those elicited by the frequency-
tagged targets. If these individuals are analogous to ball game
sportsmen, then there is a good possibility that better UFOV
in sportsmen could be accompanied by higher levels of
SSVEPs.
In conclusion, in this preliminary study, we have demon-
strated that changes in peripheral field SSVEP can potentially
be used to identify an individual with good UFOV perfor-
mance in the presence of distractors. Particularly, as
demonstrated in experiment 4, it is possible that a short 30-
 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
FIGURE 8. Percentage accuracy in experiments 1 (a), 2 (b), 3 (c) versus normalized SSVEPs in experiment 4.
second objective SSVEP test can differentiate those individu-
als with good UFOV from those with poor UFOV. For the
purpose of a quick screening test, this could be a reasonable
trade-off of assessment accuracy for shorter testing time.
While the testing time is short, the setup time for experiment
4 requires approximately 3 minutes to place the six
electrodes (O1, O2, Oz, M1, M2, GND) and to ensure their
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impedance quality. This setup time can be reduced in the
future when dry electrodes with conductivity nearly equiv-
alent to that of wet types are available. Future work should
look at larger sample size to avoid the possibility of type 1
error, as well as various eccentricities of peripheral stimulus
to estimate the distribution of attentional performance
toward the periphery. Extensive efforts in testing and
 A Potential Neural Indicator of UFOV
retesting of the screening task in experiment 4 must be made
to ascertain its reliability in predicting UFOV performance. It
will also be worthwhile to recruit sportsmen and video
gamers to study their differences using current experimental
paradigms.
Acknowledgments
Supported by Future Systems and Technology Directorate (FSTD),
Singapore. Grant number 9012102527.
Disclosure: S.T. Lin, None; L.K. Tey, None
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