VISION VS. EYESIGHT
What are visual skills?
For success in school, children must have other equally important visual skills besides their sharpness of sight, or visual acuity. They must be able to coordinate their eye movements as a team and follow a line of print without losing their place. They must also be able to maintain clear focus as they read or make quick focusing changes when looking up to the board and back to their desks. Overall they must be able to interpret and accurately process what they are seeing.
What is visual acuity?
Visual acuity is usually measured with a Snellen chart that displays letters of progressively smaller size. “Normal” vision is 20/20…20/40 visions mean that the test subject sees at 20 feet what a person with normal vision sees at 40 feet. Unfortunately, eye charts measure only visual acuity, which is just one component of good vision. They cannot determine if your eyes are “working overtime” (needing to focus more than normal, which can lead to headaches and eye strain) nor can they determine if your eyes work properly as a team for clear, comfortable binocular vision and accurate depth perception.
How do vision based learning problems affect students?
A vision based learning problem directly affects how we process information, read or sustain close work. Students with eye teaming, tracking, focusing, visual motor integration, and visual perception problems have weak visual skills, which undermine the learning process and can cause such problems as difficulty reading, double vision, headaches, eyestrain, and short attention spans. For these students, vision therapy can improve their visual skills so they can function normally in the classroom.
Students with crossed, turned, wandering, or lazy eyes only see with one eye at a time. Their brains suppress or “turn off” their weak eye. Therapy is designed to straighten the eye and teach the student to use both eyes together for normal visual function.
Don’t they check for that in school?
Remember that school screenings and pediatricians only check children’s distance vision using the eye chart. They can’t run the specialized tests required to determine if a child has all the required visual skills needed to succeed in school. A developmental optometrist must do special near-point tests to identify and diagnose potential visual problems that have significant impact on learning.
Why should I get my child’s vision checked?
If your child is struggling to read or finding it difficult to remain on task, the cause may be an undetected vision problem even if your child’s eyesight is 20/20, and he or she has passed the school’s vision screening or a routine eye exam.
Visual Problems That Can Have Significant Impact on Learning:
● eye tracking skills – eyes following a line of print
● eye teaming skills – two eyes working together as a synchronized team
● binocular vision – simultaneously blending the images from both eyes into one image
● accommodation – eye focusing visual-motor integration and eye hand coordination
● visual perception – visual memory, visual form perception, and visualization.