The first step in reading is reading fluency. Once a child has mastered that, they will start to be able to comprehend what it is they are reading.

Without comprehension, reading is a pointless and frustrating exercise. What most people don’t realize is that visual information is essential for reading comprehension.

If a child struggles with reading comprehension it could be due to an undiagnosed vision problem.

A traditional vision exam primarily measures visual acuity, or 20/20 eyesight, unusually it does not assess functional vision, so a child with ’20/20 sight’ could still have a visual problem.

Functional vision is how your entire visual system – the brain, the eyes, the visual pathways – works together to help you interact with your environment.

There are 17 visual skills that impact a child’s school performances.

The functional vision exam includes a comprehensive assessment of the visual skills including;

• Lazy eye
• Eye focusing
• Eye Tracking
• Binocular function
• Convergence
• Visual information processing

A functional eye exam is vital for all children with reading comprehension challenges.

If your child is not reading to their grade level, contact an eye doctor near you, who can diagnose and treat any visual problems.

SEE RELATED: 2021 Update: Reading Fluency

Vision and reading comprehension

There are in fact 17 visual skills that can impact a child’s school grades. Listed below are just 3 of the top functional vision problems related to reading comprehension:

1. Eye focusing (Accommodative insufficiency)

Accommodation is the eyes’ ability to focus. Tiny muscles inside your eyes contract or relax to change the shape of your eyes’ lenses and allow you to bring objects at different distances into focus.

When you focus on something close, the muscles contract, and when you focus on something in the distance, they relax. This can make reading difficult when trying to maintain focus on objects up close, such as a book.

2. Convergence insufficiency

Convergence insufficiency is a problem with keeping both eyes working together, especially when focusing on words on a page.

When the eyes don’t converge accurately, it can affect the ability to concentrate on simple near tasks. This can also result in headaches, double vision, and visual discomfort when performing near activities like reading.

3. Eye tracking (Irregular saccades)

Eye saccades is a visual skill that enables a person to make quick eye movements from one object to another, such as moving from word to word while reading. Irregular saccades make reading more challenging and difficult for a child to keep their place when reading.

Can vision therapy help?

Vision therapy is a fully personalized treatment program designed to improve and strengthen visual skills, and retrain a child’s visual system to interpret visual input with increased accuracy and ease.

Vision therapy is more than just simple eye exercises — it improves brain-eye communication, and the effective operating of a child’s visual system.

The goal of vision therapy is to boost attention, concentration, learning, and reading.

LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties

Contact an eye doctor near you that specializes in vision therapy, this may just be what your child needs to significantly improve their reading comprehension.

The post 2021 Update: Reading Comprehension appeared first on Optometrists.org.

Studies of eye clinic records suggest that children with autism (ASD) and other special needs are prone to serious vision problems.

Journal of AAPOS, 2019

Recent publication of Journal of AAPOS (American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus) showed among 2,555 children at a University of California Davis’ eye clinic that:

• 71% of children with ASD had a visual problem, of these:
  • 42% had significant refractive error
  • 32% had strabismus (eye turn)
  • 19% had amblyopia (lazy eye)

The most common vision problems experienced by children with ASD include strabismus (eye turn), in which the eyes are misaligned, and amblyopia (lazy eye), in which poor vision in one or both eyes results from issues in the early stages of visual development.

If your child has autism and you find they have vision problems, the Find an Eye Doctor directory lists eye doctors near you that are experienced in treating children with autism.

SEE RELATED: Vision and Autism: Part 1

Autism and vision problems

Over 7 out 10 individuals with autism experience vision problems.

Visual symptoms of autism can include:

• Difficulty maintaining eye contact
• Fleeting peripheral glances
• Side viewing
• Staring at spinning objects or light
• Reduce visual attention span

People with autism often use visual information inefficiently.

Visual issues can include coordinating their peripheral and central vision, this is usually displayed by having difficulty or the inability to follow an object with their eyes.

These children tend to scan or look off to the side of an object, instead of looking directly at the object and might also have difficulty maintaining visual attention.

Crossed eyes, lazy eye and eye movement disorders are common in children on the autistic spectrum.

Poor integration of peripheral and central vision

Those with autism are found to ignore peripheral vision and remain fixated on a central point of focus for long periods of time.

When there is poor integration of peripheral and central vision it can lead to difficulties in integrating and processing visual information in individuals with autism. When visual processing is interrupted cognitive, speech, motor, and perceptual abilities can also be affected.

Hypersensitive vision

It is known that many people with autism are visually defensive.

Visually defensive people might have hypersensitive vision and avoid contact with specific visual inputs. They have a hard time visually “holding still” and frequently rely on a constant scanning of visual information.

Vision exams for people with autism

As every person’s eyes are different. The way a person’s eyes are evaluated will vary depending on their individual levels of physical and emotional development.

Evaluation of the visual skills are vital to understand the functioning of the eyes and visual system, to determine if vision therapy could provide significant benefit.

Specific testing of the visual system is often done while the patient performs specific activities while wearing special lenses. For example, observing a patient’s postural compensation and adaptations will be made as they walk, sit, stand, or catch and throw a ball.

These tests help to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the visual system  and determine the best way forward to improve the quality of life.

Treatment of visual problems

The results of the vision exam can help determine if specific optical lenses are needed to compensate for farsightedness, nearsightedness, and astigmatism.

Vision therapy

Vision therapy is a successful process to help treat vision issues for those with autism and special needs. The activities in a vision therapy program can be used to stimulate general eye movements, visual arousal, and the central visual system.

The goal of vision therapy is to help autistic individuals to:

• gain peripheral stability
• gain more efficient eye coordination
• organize visual space
• attend to and appreciate central vision
• improve visual information processing

If your child has autism and you find they have vision problems, the Find an Eye Doctor directory lists eye doctors near you that are experienced in treating children with autism.

LEARN MORE: Vision for Special Needs

If you think vision therapy will help your autistic child, contact an eye doctor near you to get your child’s eyes tested and to discuss the best treatment options to improve their quality of life.

The post 2021 Update: Autism (ASD) and Vision appeared first on Optometrists.org.

How can optometrists help?

Visual processing describes the way the brain processes visual information – this includes all information from a child’s reading, computer, sports, facial cues and social interactions.

Visual processing difficulties affect many students diagnosed with reading and learning disabilities, dyslexia and ADD/ADHD.

What are VIP difficulties?

There are several different types of visual processing difficulties, each with its own symptoms. An individual can have more than one type of visual processing difficulty.

1. Visual discrimination

Visual discrimination is the ability to recognize similarities and differences between shapes, sizes, objects, colors and patterns.

2. Visual figure-ground

Figure-ground perception is the ability to filter visual information that isn’t immediately relevant  so that you can focus on the relevant visual information.

3. Form constancy 

Form constancy is a visual perceptual skill that allows you to understand that a form, shape or object stays the same even when it changes its size, position or is in a different environment.

4. Visual closure

Visual closure is a visual perceptual skill that allows you to know what an object is even when the object is only partially visible.

5. Visual memory

Visual memory is the ability to immediately recall what the eye has seen.

6. Visual sequential memory

Visual sequential memory is the ability to remember and recall a sequence of objects and/or events in the correct order.

7. Visual motor integration

Visual motor integration is the ability to interpret visual information and respond with a motor action.

Signs VIP difficulties?

The most common signs of VIP difficulties include:

• Slow reading speed
• Difficulties with spelling
• Confusing similar looking words
• Reading words backwards
• Writing letters or numbers backwards
• Reduced math skills
• Poor reading comprehension
• Messy handwriting
• Confusion of letters and numbers

How can vision therapy help?

A vision therapy treatment program can improve a child’s visual processing abilities through eye exercises that help retrain the eyes and brain to work together.

Schedule an eye exam with a vision therapy eye doctor near you who can diagnose and treat any vision problems your child may have.

The post What is Visual Information Processing? appeared first on Optometrists.org.

If a child has some kind of visual dysfunction, it can hinder their academic performance and affect their reading fluency.

Children who struggle with reading fluency are often intelligent and bright, but somehow they have difficulty reading.

If your child avoids reading or is not reading to their potential, contact an eye doctor near you, as they may have an undetected visual problem.

SEE RELATED: How Does Vision Therapy Boost Self Confidence?

What is reading fluency?

Reading fluency is the ability to read quickly, accurately, clearly and with expression. Children must be able to read fluently, whether aloud or quietly to themselves, in order to comprehend what they read. While reading aloud, the words should sound natural, with proper intonation.

Reading fluency is an essential classroom skill as it connects the child’s word recognition to their comprehension. 

Reading fluency gives students the opportunity to concentrate on the meaning of text and to draw correlations between what they are reading and their own prior knowledge. Reading fluency enables students to develop an accurate comprehension.

Non-fluent readers read slowly and sound choppy. They spend more time decoding, so they have less time and energy to understand what they are reading.  Oftentimes, they have to read the same passage many times in order to comprehend it.

Reading fluency and vision

Reading fluency is dependent on the strength of visual skills such as convergence, binocular vision, accommodation, visual fixation and saccades.

A deficiency in any of these crucial visual skills can lead to reading problems, which can have a negative effect on a child’s ability to learn.

Which visual skills are necessary for reading?

• Convergence – the ability of the eyes to retain a single image by turning inward, while at the same time focusing on a near object, such as a book or computer screen.
• Binocular fusion – the ability of the brain to create a single image using distinct visual information received from each eye.
• Accommodation – the ability of the eyes to switch focus between two distances while maintaining clear vision.
• Visual fixation – the ability of the eyes to accurately focus on a target image, such as a word on a page.
• Saccades – rapid eye movements across two or more focus points, such as when reading a sentence across a page or moving from one word to the next.

Could my child have a vision problem?

As children may not be able to verbally express themselves it can be difficult to identify a vision problem.

Common signs of a vision problem may include:

• Covering one eye
• Behavioral problems
• Frequent blinking
• Excessive fidgeting
• Limited attention span
• Tilting head to one side
• School avoidance
• Reading comprehension difficulties
• Reading below school grade level
• Reading avoidance

If your child shows signs of a visual impairment, it is important to visit an eye doctor near you for a comprehensive evaluation of your child’s vision and visual skills.

Can vision therapy help?

Vision is a learned skill that can be trained and strengthened.

If a vision problem is at the root of your child’s reading difficulty, a vision therapy program can improve your child’s reading grades.

A vision therapy program may help to improve your child’s visual skills and provide them with the necessary tools to succeed in learning and reading.

Each vision therapy program is created to the needs of the individual child, and may include prisms, filters, specialized lenses and eye exercises to help retrain the brain-eye connection and improve visual skills.

LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties

If you think a vision problem may be affecting your child’s reading success, schedule an evaluation with a vision therapy eye doctor who can help strengthen their visual skills to improve reading fluency.

The post What is Reading Fluency? appeared first on Optometrists.org.

When a child incorrectly perceives the information their eyes are relaying to their brain, their body will react with an inappropriate motor response.

Visual motor integration is crucial for activities that require the body to respond to visual information, such as eye-hand coordination and playing sports. 

Schedule an evaluation with a vision therapy eye doctor who can help improve any visual problems your child may have.

SEE RELATED: Visual Form Constancy

What is visual motor integration?

The ability to interpret visual information and respond with a motor action is visual motor integration. For example, you see a ball and you respond by moving your hands to catch the ball.

Visual motor integration is essential for the development of their fine motor and gross motor skills.

Signs of poor visual motor integration

Your child might have trouble with visual motor integration if they exhibit some of the following visual processing symptoms:

• Difficulty staying within the lines when coloring
• Difficulty catching or kicking a ball
• Trouble fastening buttons or tying shoelaces
• Difficulty copying from the board
• Poor handwriting
• Trouble in geometry and lining up math problems

If you suspect a problem in your child’s vision, contact an eye doctor near you, to have your child’s vision evaluated.

How vision therapy can help

Vision therapy can improve visual motor integration skills through eye exercises that help retrain the eyes and brain to work together.

These exercises will help them improve their fine motor and gross motor skills to improve their body coordination and enhance their enjoyment of participating in sports.

LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties

Schedule an eye exam with an eye doctor near you who can diagnose and treat any vision problems your child may have.

The post Visual Motor Integration appeared first on Optometrists.org.

The ability to remember the objects in a certain order is crucial to learning how to read, write, develop comprehension and succeed in math.

Schedule an evaluation with a vision therapy eye doctor who can help improve any visual problems your child may have.

SEE RELATED: Visual Closure

What is visual sequential memory?

Visual sequential memory is the ability to remember and recall a sequence of objects and/or events in the correct order.

For example, a child with poor visual sequential memory may  read the word ‘felt’ as ‘left’ or ‘cat’ as ‘act.’

Signs of poor visual sequential memory

Your child might have trouble with visual sequential memory if they exhibit the following visual processing symptoms:

• Reading or comprehension difficulties
• Difficulty remembering forms (including shapes, orientation, sizes, and colors) or characters in the correct order
• Often whispers or talks aloud as they write
• Trouble spelling – misses, adds or jumbles letters within words
• Trouble recognizing and remembering patterns

If you suspect a problem in your child’s vision contact an eye doctor near you, to have your child’s vision evaluated.

How vision therapy can help

Vision therapy can improve visual sequential memory skills through eye exercises that help develop the child’s visual information processing skills.

These exercises will not only improve a child’s sequential memory issue, but help them improve their reading, comprehension and spelling skills so that their academic performance improves.

LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties

Schedule an eye exam with an eye doctor near you who can diagnose and treat any vision problems your child may have.

The post Visual Sequential Memory appeared first on Optometrists.org.

Visual discrimination is the ability to determine similarities and differences between various things, a skill that helps a child understand and appreciate the subtle differences in words.

This skill is especially important for learning how to read and write.

Schedule an evaluation with a vision therapy eye doctor who can help improve any visual problems your child may have.

SEE RELATED: Visual Memory

What is visual discrimination?

Visual discrimination is the ability to recognize similarities and differences between colors, size, shapes, patterns and objects.

Good visual discrimination prevents a child from confuses similar looking words.

For example, when reading, it’s visual discrimination that enables them to understand that the words “spring” and “spin” are different even though they have the similar letters.

Signs of poor visual discrimination

Your child might have trouble with visual discrimination, if they exhibit the following visual processing symptoms:

• Confuses letters and numbers
• Loses their place while reading aloud
• Trouble enjoying activities like puzzles or reading
• Trouble finding information during open book quizzes
• Trouble picking out details and differences

If you suspect a problem in your child’s vision, contact an eye doctor near you, to have your child’s vision evaluated.

How vision therapy can help

Vision therapy can improve visual discrimination skills through eye exercises that help retrain the eyes and brain to work together. These exercises will not only improve a child’s visual discrimination issue, but help them improve their reading skills so that learning can be easier and fun.

LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties

Schedule an eye exam with an eye doctor near you who can diagnose and treat any vision problems your child may have.

The post Visual Descrimination appeared first on Optometrists.org.

Almost 60 percent of people who use computers and digital devices daily experience eye strain, including sore eyes, headaches, tiredness or loss of concentration.

Here are 5 tips to reduce your risk of eye strain affecting your daily life:

1. Frequent eye exams

Let your eye doctor know if you are experiencing any symptoms listed above. Frequent eye exams are the most important thing you can do to reduce the impact eye strain is having on your life.

2. Reduce glare

Glare from light reflecting off walls and finished surfaces, as well as reflections on your computer screen also can cause eye strain. Using an anti-glare screen on your screen may also reduce reelected glare off the display.

3. Avoid dry eyes

When using a computer the eyes can dry out, due to blinking less often and air conditioning. When staring at a screen, people blink less frequently, up to 66% less than they normally do and tears can also evaporate due to air conditioning.

If you experience dry eye symptoms, schedule an appointment with an eye doctor near you to discuss artificial tears or other eye lubricants.

4. Walk away

To reduce your risk for computer vision syndrome and neck, back and shoulder pain, it is recommended to walk away – from your screen. Taking frequent screen breaks at least one 10-minute break every hour, will allow your eyes to relax.

During these breaks, stand up, walk for 5 minutes, and also stretch your arms, legs, back, neck and shoulders to reduce tension and muscle fatigue.

5. Computer glasses

Customized computer glasses can be prescribed by eye doctors, these often provide the greatest relief from computer eye strain..

Computer glasses also are a good choice if you wear bifocals or progressive lenses, because these lenses generally are not optimal for the distance to your computer screen.

Computer glasses can also include blue light lenses and anti-reflective (AR) coating, which also reduces glare.

The post 5 Tips to Avoid Computer Eye Strain appeared first on Optometrists.org.

When a child has a visual processing or perceptual disorder it hinders their ability to make sense of information taken in through the eyes and visual system. This does not mean they have problems with sharpness of vision or sight.

Many children have difficulties with eye tracking, which impacts how the brain interprets visual information.

What is eye tracking?

Eye tracking, also called visual tracking, is the eyes’ ability to track from left to right in an efficient manner and to follow moving objects.

Eye tracking problems are successfully treated with vision therapy.

Eye movements should be quick, consistent and smooth.

Eye tracking is critical to success in sports and school. The ability to track a ball or words on a page are affected when a person has poor eye tracking skills.

Poor eye tracking skills can cause difficulty in math, reading and writing. The issue is not with the eyes themselves, but the eye muscles. With poor eye tracking, eye motions may lack smoothness, causing vision to be jumpy. This can be a big contributor to dyslexia symptoms.

If you suspect your child has a learning difficulty, contact an eye doctor near you, who can diagnose and treat any visual problems.

SEE RELATED: 2021 Update: Reading Fluency

Eye tracking symptoms  

Some of the symptoms associated with eye tracking deficits include:

• Difficulty paying attention
• Clumsiness
• Difficulty copying from the board at school
• Guessing of words
• Guided reading – uses a finger when reading
• Loss of place when reading, writing, or copying
• Omits words or transposes words when reading
• Overwhelmed by pages of text
• Poor accuracy with word endings
• Poor awareness of punctuation
• Poor reading comprehension, fluency and speed
• Poor handwriting
• Poor sports performance
• Skips sentences
• Resists or avoids reading
• Re-reads words or sentences
• Reverses words or letters
• Rubs or squints eyes when reading
• Tilts head when reading
• Words or text may appear to float or move on the page

Vision therapy and eye tracking

The best way to treat a visual tracking disorder is with vision therapy. 

Vision therapy is a customized program to help strengthen the eye-brain connection, which is often weak in a person with visual tracking problems. It involves specific exercises designed to teach the eyes how to move smoothly from one place to another.

Sometimes reading lenses and/or bifocals can be helpful to reduce eye tracking symptoms. Therefore your eye doctor may recommend a vision therapy program along with lenses.

LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties

Schedule an appointment with a vision therapy eye doctor near you to evaluate your child’s eye tracking abilities.

The post 2021 Update: Vision Therapy for Eye Tracking appeared first on Optometrists.org.

Vision is not just ‘20/20 sight’ but is also how the eyes and brain communicate.

Your child may have clear sight, but in order to learn and have clear handwriting and accurate spelling a child also needs well developed visual skills.

Visual skills are how the eyes and brain talk to each other and are essential to perform at school, especially for handwriting and spelling. If your child has a problem with any of their 17 visual skills the clarity of their handwriting and accuracy of their spelling could be affected.

According to the American Optometric Association (AOA), up to 1 every 4  children have a significant vision problem that impacts their learning and school performance.

Schedule an eye exam with an eye doctor near you who can evaluate and determine if your child’s visual skills are impacting their learning.

SEE RELATED: 2021 Update: Reading Comprehension

How do visual problems impact the child?

Vision problems can affect a child’s reading, writing and spelling along with other aspects of learning. If your child’s vision is compromised then their academic performance may suffer.

Vision problems can impact any of these:

• Handwriting
• Homework completion
• Reading fluency
• Reading comprehension
• Spelling
• Attention and concentration
• Classroom performance
• Visual arts

Vision skills for writing

Efficient writing is vital for taking notes, completing assignments and taking exams. Illegible handwriting can lead to proofreading mistakes, and sometimes even avoidance of writing tasks.

If your child is unable to write legibly, they may have reduced fine visual motor and visual perception skills.

Fine visual motor skills: help a child to write neatly, with appropriately sized letters. A child with poor fine visual motor skills may press too hard on the page when writing, which can lead to muscle strain and fatigue of the hand or wrist.

Visual perception: helps a child to visualize words and letters, including their size and shape. This skill triggers a subconscious motor response that  enables the child to write the letters and words on the paper. Without this skill, the ability to write legibly will be affected.

A combination of these two visual skills is necessary to ensure that the letters are written in sequence, consistently sized, within the lines, and appropriately spaced.

Vision skills for spelling

A child’s spelling abilities are affected by their visual skills in focusing and eye pursuits skills.

Focusing: allows your child to see a word with absolute clarity. If a child has poor focusing skills, they may exert too much energy in making sure the word is seen clearly, which can affect their word memory.

Eye Pursuits: enable the eyes to scan a word, with smooth binocular movements, in order to read a word accurately. Without this visual skill, a child may omit sounds in a word. These assumptions and omissions often lead to spelling mistakes.

Vision therapy and writing and spelling

Vision therapy is a personalized treatment program that involves a series of eye exercises to strengthen the eye-brain connection and improve visual skills.

It is important to treat vision problems as early as possible so that your child can achieve optimal results and reach their full potential in school.

If you think your child may have a vision problem, schedule a comprehensive vision evaluation with a vision therapy eye doctor near you.

LEARN MORE:  Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties

The doctor will be able to detect any vision problems, and will discuss how vision therapy could improve your child’s writing and spelling.

The post 2021 Update: Writing and Spelling appeared first on Optometrists.org.