;
Lorem Ipsum Dolor Spring 2016
4
Philosophy in Vision Science at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham in December 2015.
The Dissertation of the Year Award is presented to a DVIDB
member who makes a significant contribution to the field through
extensive study and research. Dr. Bowman's dissertation,
"Transferring virtual reality training to real world settings in
individuals with low vision and dual-sensory impairments"
determined if individuals with severely impaired vision could learn
useful road safety skills in Virtual Reality (VR) and could transfer
these skills to real streets. To achieve this goal, one set of O&M
skills, using the near lane parallel traffic surge to decide the best
timing for crossing a signal controlled street, was selected to study.
Twelve participants with low vision were recruited for the study and
randomly assigned to learn the O&M still in either a VR street
environment or a real street environment. Both groups showed a
significant increase in their safety score after training. A repeated
17