A child-friendly experimental setup was used to test binocular rivalry (
Fig. 1). Binocular rivalry dynamics were measured before occlusion therapy onset and at four different time points during therapy: 2 hours, 1 month, 2 months, and 5 months. Mean phase durations, defined as the average duration in which observers perceived the stimulus presented to either eye during binocular rivalry, are reported in
Figure 2. As expected from the difference in visual acuity between the eyes, dominance durations of the nonamblyopic eye were overall considerably higher compared with the amblyopic eye, mean phase duration in binocular rivalry being a proxy for eye dominance (
Fig. 2). Interestingly, during occlusion therapy, a different trend was observed for the nonamblyopic (
Fig. 2A) and amblyopic (
Fig. 2B) eye: phase durations of the nonamblyopic eye increased after 2 hours of occlusion, whereas durations of the amblyopic eye decreased, both reverting to pretherapy levels after 2 months of therapy retaining the same balance at 5 months (comparison 2 versus 5 months: paired-sample
t-test,
n = 7 [S1, S2, S4, S7, S8, S9, and S10],
α = 0.05,
t[6] = 0.9,
P = 0.4). Because complete data are available for only five patients, we performed ANOVA tests on the first four intervals tested (from pretreatment to 2 months after treatment). The Shapiro-Wilk test indicated that the data distribution followed a normal distribution (all
Ps < 0.17). A 2(EYES) × 4(TIME) repeated measures ANOVA (performed on log mean phase durations of the seven patients for which all measurements were acquired: S4, S5, S6, S7, S8, S9, and S10) confirmed a significant effect of the factor EYES,
F1,6 = 28.072,
η2 = 0.82,
P = 0.002, and a significant EYES*TIME interaction,
F3,18 = 8.812,
η2 = 0.595,
P = 0.001 (Mauchly's Test of Sphericity indicated that the assumption of sphericity had not been violated, Mauchly's
w = 0.49,
χ2[5] = 7.26,
P = 0.21), however no significant effect of the factor TIME,
F3,18 = 2.538,
η2 = 0.297,
P = 0.09 (Mauchly's
w = 0.49,
χ2[5] = 3.33,
P = 0.65). A polynomial test on the EYES*TIME interactions revealed a quadratic component of the effect,
F1,6 = 22.436,
η2 = 0.79,
P = 0.003, reflecting that the effect of occlusion on binocular rivalry mean phase duration had a curvilinear trend.