Most people have a dominant hand that they use for tasks requiring precision, like writing or eating. Similarly, in tasks that require using only one eye, like looking through a telescope or a camera viewfinder, people tend to favor a specific eye.
This selection of one eye in such (monocular) tasks is referred to as Eye Preference.
In binocular tasks that require a precise line of sight, like aiming a gun or pointing with a finger, the brain often relies more heavily on input from one eye. This is known as sighting eye dominance.
That sighting dominant eye guides many visuo-motor activities like drawing or hitting a ball; for this reason, it is also referred to as the motor-dominant eye.
The brain combines input from two eyes to produce a single, unified image. However, the brain may rely more heavily on one eye and when each eye is presented with different visual inputs, one eye tends to determine the visual experience: this is known as the sensory dominant eye.
Sensory eye dominance can impact tasks like object recognition, visual search or spatial navigation.
There is no strong relationship between people’s sensory dominant and sighting dominant eye.
Click one slide button to simulate how visual perception changes when the brain relies more heavily on input from one eye
