Movable Forest

The moveable forest is a wonderful activity for helping our patients experience the visual space that is before them. The plexiglass or Perspex, depending upon the part of the world you are from, provides the patient with a reflection of the penlight or transilluminator as seen in this video. As the light is moved closer to or further away from the barrier it’s reflection moves exactly the same distance behind it, as can be seen in the video and the picture in the middle of this page. When looking straight on, binocularity adds greatly to the ability to be precise with the placement of the light. If you close one eye, but remain in the center of the plexi, it becomes very difficult to get the Z-axis placement correct. Thus, there is a high reward for using the binocular system in a relatively balanced way. By feeling the arm move forward and backward, the patient gets the correlate to what the eyes are doing as they move from one target to another.

ASIDE: The name of the activity comes from Dr. Harris’ student experience at SUNY. Tom Flagg, a lab assistant to the vision perception course, brought in to the classroom one day a piece of the leaf room, which was used for demonstrations using size lenses. Thanks Tom for moving your piece of the forest into our classroom. This activity is named for you.