Long-term experience of stereoblindness cultivates adaptive planning of reaching-to-grasp

Reaching-to-grasp objects is a fundamental action for humans and heavily reliant on stereoscopic vision. However, it remains unclear how reach-to-grasp performance is affected in the long-term absence of stereoscopic information, or say, what consequences come with such absence. To address these issues, we recruited 12 stereo-blind individuals and 12 typical developed individuals to compare their performances in a slant matching task and a reach-to-grasp task, respectively. The slant matching task revealed no significant differences between the two groups on slant perception, consistent with previous research (Yang et al, 2022). In contrast, the grasping task revealed that the stereoblind group approached the target more quickly and initiated grip alignment later, suggesting a greater reliance on online visuomotor feedback in grasping objects compared to the stereo normal people. These findings indicate that the stereoblind individuals employed adaptive strategies to improve their interaction with the environment, compensating for their lack of stereoscopic vision.