What does it mean for one eye to be dominant and how does it contribute to our vision?

Question

I’m curious about what exactly a dominant eye means, and what effect it has on how humans see the world

In: 4

Answer 1

One application is the single-eye viewing devices, like cameras. Most people would choose to use their dominant eye if they have to use only one eye, and the non-dominant eye may perform poorly if used alone.

In the movie Firebird, Jake Preston (Nicolas Cage) has a left dominant eye but the helicopter’s helmet mounted the night-vision eye-piece right side, so he has to train his right eye to be the dominant eye.

I myself also have left dominant eye so when I use cameras, I see with only the left eye through the viewfinder and my right eye is blocked with the camera body. People with right dominant eye could use the right eye to see through the viewfinder and keep the left eye open to see outside the camera. I can never do that because if my two eyes sees different views, then the left dominates and the right eye’s view couldn’t draw enough attention from the brain.

Same for shooting a gun. The ideal case is to use the dominant eye for aiming and the non-dominant eye to keep aware of the entire scene. If you aim with the non-dominant eye, most people would subconsciously close the dominant eye and lose most of the situational awareness.