Setting up a custom exercise

January 20, 2025 · by Vision Research Team

Setting up a custom exercise

EyeTrainer's powerful exercise builder allows you to create personalized training programs that target your specific visual goals. This guide will walk you through the process of designing and configuring custom exercises.

Understanding Exercise Parameters

Before creating your custom exercise, it's important to understand the key parameters that influence perceptual learning:

Stimulus Characteristics

  • Contrast levels: Adjust the difference between target and background
  • Spatial frequency: Control the size and detail of visual patterns
  • Orientation: Set specific angles or ranges for directional stimuli
  • Duration: Define how long stimuli are presented

Training Protocol

  • Repetitions: Number of trials per session
  • Difficulty progression: Adaptive or fixed difficulty levels
  • Feedback type: Immediate, delayed, or performance summary
  • Session length: Target duration for optimal learning without fatigue

Creating Your First Custom Exercise

Step 1: Choose Your Training Goal

EyeTrainer offers templates for common visual training objectives:

  • Contrast sensitivity enhancement
  • Visual acuity improvement
  • Binocular balance training
  • Motion perception
  • Spatial attention

Step 2: Configure Stimulus Parameters

Access the exercise builder and adjust parameters based on your baseline performance:

Initial Contrast: 20%
Spatial Frequency: 4 cycles/degree
Orientation: Random (0-360°)
Presentation Duration: 200ms

Step 3: Set Up Adaptive Difficulty

Enable adaptive difficulty to ensure optimal challenge:

  • Staircase method: Adjusts difficulty based on recent performance
  • Step size: How much difficulty changes after correct/incorrect responses
  • Convergence criteria: When the exercise stabilizes at your threshold

Step 4: Configure Dichoptic Settings (Optional)

For binocular training, you can present different stimuli to each eye:

  • Eye dominance balance: Adjust relative contrast between eyes
  • Interocular suppression reduction: Gradually increase weaker eye stimulus
  • Fusion training: Practice combining images from both eyes

Best Practices

Session Frequency

Train 3-5 times per week for optimal neuroplasticity without overtraining.

Progress Tracking

Monitor your performance curves to ensure:

  • Steady improvement over sessions
  • Appropriate difficulty level (70-80% accuracy is ideal)
  • Transfer to untrained conditions

Environmental Setup

  • Use VR headset in a comfortable, quiet space
  • Ensure proper calibration before each session
  • Take breaks if you experience eye strain

Advanced Customization

Multi-Stage Training Programs

Create progressive training programs that evolve as you improve:

  1. Foundation Phase: Build basic sensitivity
  2. Specificity Phase: Target your primary goal
  3. Transfer Phase: Generalize learning to real-world tasks

Combining Exercise Types

Mix different exercise types within a session:

  • Start with attention warm-up exercises
  • Progress to main training task
  • End with consolidation activities

Troubleshooting

Exercise Too Easy or Too Hard

Adjust the initial difficulty or staircase parameters:

  • Increase step size for faster adaptation
  • Modify convergence criteria for different starting points

No Improvement After Several Sessions

Consider:

  • Reducing session difficulty to build confidence
  • Changing stimulus parameters (orientation, frequency)
  • Ensuring adequate rest between sessions

Getting Help

Our research team is available to help optimize your training protocol. Contact us through the EyeTrainer app for personalized recommendations based on your progress data.

Custom exercises are a powerful tool for targeted visual improvement. Start with our templates and adjust based on your experience.