TESTS FOR DETECTION AND ANALYSIS OF COLOR BLINDNESS

Abstract

Because of their great convenience and apparent simplicity of administration, polychromatic charts for the detection of defective color vision have been widely used in military and industrial fields for many years. Much dissatisfaction has been reported, and both the statistics of the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the results obtained by the Color Blindness Committee (Army Air Forces, United States Navy, Civil Aeronautics Administration and Inter-Society Color Council) indicate that, as they are used at present, polychromatic test plates are only about 50 per cent effective in screening out persons with defective color vision by the criterion of the test itself. In an endeavor to discover the reason for this failure, extensive investigations have been undertaken at the Knapp Memorial Laboratories utilizing a large battery of tests on all types of subjects, ranging from persons with normal to those with extremely defective color vision. Our results indicate that while defects in