Evaluation of a new color vision test: "color vision testing made easy"

Abstract

Purpose: A new pseudoisochromatic color plate test, "Color Vision Testing Made Easy" (CVTMET) has recently been introduced. Said to be designed for all age groups, including pre-school children, it uses the identification of simple shapes and objects to detect red-green color deficiencies. We evaluated the CVTMET to determine if the test is suitable for color vision screening of young children.

Methods: Forty-one adults predetermined to be color normal (n = 20) or to have hereditary red-green color deficiency (n = 21), served as subjects. A battery of color vision tests including the Ishihara, Panel D-15, and the anomaloscope were used for diagnosis and color deficiency classification. Subjects were then tested with Part I and Part II of the CVTMET test and results were compared to the Ishihara, Panel D-15, and anomaloscope. In addition, the CVTMET was used to screen for color vision deficiency in 152 kindergarten children 5 to 7 years of age.

Results: The pass/fail results for the adult subjects were the same for Parts I and II and compared favorably with the anomaloscope. There were no false positives (100% specificity) and only a few (2 of 21) false negatives (90.5% sensitivity). The two color-deficient subjects who passed the CVTMET had the mildest color deficiencies (simple deuteranomaly) and also passed the Ishihara test. Testability of kindergarten children was found to be 100%. Color vision deficiency occurred in 5.06% of the boys, which is about the same frequency found in older boys of similar ethnic background.

Conclusion: This preliminary study indicates that the CVTMET appears to be an excellent screening instrument for red-green color deficiency in adults and has been shown to be useful for examining color vision in children 5 to 7 years of age.