Thanks, Stephen. Those are great descriptions. Very helpful.
I told my class that I assumed that 'night blindness' was some sort of
inability of the rods to process light, and that it was most likely a
problem with the way that retinal and opsin were either splitting, or
rejoining because I thought that it was caused by a lack of vitamin A.
But, I didn't know for sure. I remembered a study I'd read a long time
ago, which said that some drivers have difficulty driving in the night
because they have a sort of overconfidence in their peripheral vision,
which causes them to focus at the wrong distance. I was wondering if that
sort of thing, too, was 'night blindness'? whether night blindness was an
actual diagnosis? etc. I've found the same sort of definition that you
found in the dictionary, which is unsatisfying to me because it doesn't
make clear to me what 'night blindness' is.
Thanks again for your answer.
Faith Florer
Adjunct Asst. Professor, Marymount College and NYU
http://www.river.org/~flf/Faith.html.
