Smartphone viewing distance during active or passive tasks and relation to heterophoria

Our aim was to analyze viewing distance for smartphone users (aged 18-45 y.) in terms of passive or active task, relation to heterophoria, type of refractive error and smartphone font size. Participants were asked to read out loud text message (passive task) and afterwards rewrite the same text and send back (active task). For the text message we used sentence consisting of 23 words and 200 characters (with spaces). Participants used their own smartphones (font size monitored). For both passive and active task we measured task time and viewing distance at the end of the task. We found significantly shorter viewing distance for digital active task compared to passive task (29.3 ± 4.7 and 32.…