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.

When blurred vision and a headache are experienced at the same time it can be frightening, especially the first time it happens.

Blurred vision can affect one or both eyes. It can cause vision to be cloudy, dim, or even peppered with shapes and colors, making it difficult to see.

If a headache occurs with or causes blurred vision, it may be due to an underlying condition or medical emergency.

SEE RELATED: Can Sleep Apnea Affect your Eyes?

Contact an eye doctor near you if you experience blurred vision and a headache at the same time, as it can be a sign of a serious condition.

Conditions that can cause both a headache and blurred vision include:

1. Migraines

Migraines affect at least 10 percent of the world’s population. Migraine headaches cause severe pulsing or throbbing pain in a part of the head.

Roughly one-third of migraine sufferers also experience visual disturbances, such as blurred vision.

Visual symptoms of migraines tend to last an hour or less. Visual problems tend to set in before any pain is experienced, but they can also occur during the headache itself.

Other symptoms commonly associated with migraines include:

• blind spots
• nausea and vomiting
• objects seeming closer or further away than they are
• partial or complete temporary loss of vision
• seeing flashes of light or stars, squiggles, or dots
• seeing an aura of light around objects
• sensitivity to light and sound
• tunnel vision
• zigzagging lines that move across the field of vision and often shimmer

These symptoms are typically treated with painkillers, such as aspirin and ibuprofen, and  prescription medications.

If you experience any of these symptoms, contact an eye doctor near you.

2. Eye Strain

Eye strain occurs when the eyes become exhausted from prolonged use, such as driving long distances or looking at a computer screen or other digital device.

In many cases, signs and symptoms of eyestrain can indicate an underlying eye condition.

Undiagnosed visual problems causing headaches include such as an eye muscle imbalance or a need for glasses for the correction of myopia, hyperopia, or astigmatism. Wearing glasses with an incorrect prescription may also cause eye strain.

Other than headaches and blurred, signs and symptoms of eye strain may include:

• Difficulty concentrating
• Double vision
• Feeling that you cannot keep your eyes open
• Increased sensitivity to light
• Sore neck, shoulders or back
• Sore, tired, burning or itchy eyes
• Watery or dry eyes

3. Binocular Vision Dysfunction (BVD)

BVD is due to a misalignment between the two eyes, causing the eyes to struggle to work together.

When people have normal binocular vision, their eyes function together and are completely in sync at all times, allowing the eyes to give the brain one clear and focused image.

Headaches and dizziness are the two most common symptoms associated with BVD. 

Patients with BVD tend to experience headaches in the front of the face or the temples. The dizziness is often described as feeling lightheaded or disoriented.

Other signs and symptoms include:

• Anxiety
• Dizziness
• Double vision
• Fatigue
• Headache
• Light sensitivity
• Motion sickness
• Stress

Blurred vision and headache together can indicate a serious medical condition.

If symptoms are mild and only last for a short period or you’ve been diagnosed with migraine, see an eye doctor.

LEARN MORE:  Guide to Eye Conditions

If you’re concerned about your symptoms, schedule an appointment with an eye doctor near you.

The post Blurry Vision and Headaches 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.

Does your child still reverse letters, numbers or words? It could be a visual form constancy problem.

Form constancy is necessary to understand that letters, words and numbers remain the same whether in a book, newspaper, a sign or in a different font or text.

Children who have problems with form constancy may frequently reverse letters and/or numbers, causing reading or math difficulties.

What is visual information processing?

Visual information processing (VIP), also known as the visual perceptual skills, are the skills necessary for processing visual information, such as when reading, using a computer, playing sports, understanding facial cues, and more.

Difficulties with VIP are often found among students reading and learning disabilities, dyslexia and ADHD.

What is visual form constancy?

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

For example, when you see the letter ‘A,’ it’s always the letter ‘A’ whether in a word, bigger text or different font.

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

SEE RELATED: Visual Sequential Memory

Signs of poor visual form constancy

Your child might have trouble with visual form constancy if they exhibit the following visual processing symptoms:

• Reading or math difficulties
• Struggles to find missing items quickly
• Struggles to recognize objects when placed in a new location
• Struggles to always recognize familiar objects or places in photographs
• Has trouble using building blocks or putting together a puzzle based on a picture
• Has trouble judging heights and distances
• Has trouble reading unusual fonts

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 form constancy skills through eye exercises that help retrain the eyes and brain to work together.

These exercises will help your child to more effectively remember words and improve spelling and number recognition.

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 Form Constancy appeared first on Optometrists.org.

It could be a visual figure-ground perception problem.

Figure-ground perception is a key component of visual processing that allows children to understand what they see.

This is an important brain function that affects everything from learning to read to solving puzzles.

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

SEE RELATED: Visual Descrimination

What is visual figure ground?

Figure-ground perception is the ability to filter out irrelevant visual information so that you can concentrate on what matters.

This enables a child to locate precise visual information in the midst of a cluttered context. For example, we use figure-ground perception when reading a flyer on a busy bulletin board.

Signs of poor visual-ground perception

Your child might have trouble with figure-ground perception if they exhibit the following visual processing symptoms:

• Trouble concentrating on books with small print and/or many words on a page
• Trouble copying notes from the board
• Struggles with Hidden Pictures and I Spy games
• Trouble picking out details in images or words
• Trouble scanning for information in text

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 figure-ground skills through eye exercises that help retrain the eyes and brain to work together. These exercises will not only improve a child’s visual figure-ground perception.

Vision Therapy will also help them improve the literacy skills so that learning doesn’t have to be a struggle.

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 Figure Ground appeared first on Optometrists.org.

The ability to quickly view parts of objects and mentally determine what they are before seeing the entire object is important for reading quickly and fluently, and for predicting differences in similar words.

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

SEE RELATED: Signs of Visual Processing Information Dysfunction

What is visual closure?

Visual closure is the ability to visualize a complete whole when given incomplete information or a partial picture.

This ability helps children to read and comprehend information quickly; their eyes don’t need to process each letter in each word separately in order to understand the word by sight.

Visual closure allows a person to differentiate between words that sound similar, especially those with similar beginnings or endings. It can also help  children recognize inferences and make predictions.

Signs of poor visual closure

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

• Needs extra time to sound out words they already learned
• Trouble finding an item if part of it is hidden
• Trouble pulling the correct paper or book from a stack
• Trouble putting together jigsaw puzzles
• Trouble with games that require guessing an item based on a close-up photo

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 closure skills through eye exercises that help retrain the eyes and brain to work together.

These exercises will improve not only a child’s visual closure problem, but also strengthen their word recognition and reading skills to improve their learning and overall school performance.

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 Closure appeared first on Optometrists.org.

The ability to remember what we see is important to process short-term memory into long-term memory.

Visual memory is necessary for most academic tasks, including reading, spelling, reading comprehension, math and copying from a board to a notebook.

When a child has poor visual memory, school can become difficult.

What is visual memory?

Visual memory is the ability to immediately recall what the eye has seen. It allows a child to remember what a symbol, object, shape or form looked like, which is essential for learning.

Visual memory for reading and writing

There are four specific visual memory skills that are necessary for success in reading and writing:

1. Visual sensory memory includes information that comes from any of the five senses (hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste). This type of memory enables you to remember a word or image that was shown for just a brief period of time and then easily recall that information.
2. Visual working memory helps you to remember information for short periods of time, such as when asked to repeat a sentence in a story, or put the events of the story in proper sequence.
3. Visual spatial memory allows you to create a picture of the information in your mind. This is necessary for many skills, such as understanding sequences of events, recalling text and images in a story, and remembering the correct spelling of a word.
4. Visual sequential memory helps you to remember the sequence of letters, objects and events in the correct order. This is essential for spelling as well as comprehension of text.

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

SEE RELATED: Visual Motor Integration

Signs of poor visual memory

If your child exhibits several of these symptoms, poor visual memory could be the cause:

• Difficulty copying information from a book or the board
• Difficulty recognizing letters or numbers
• Difficulty with sight words (sounds them out instead)
• May appear lazy in written work
• Confuses letters or words when writing
• Poor math skills
• Poor reading comprehension
• Poor spelling skills
• Slow handwriting
• Trouble finding letters on a keyboard or numbers on a calculator
• Trouble memorizing basic information such as phone numbers

If your child shows signs of any of these symptoms, contact an eye doctor near you to have your child’s vision evaluated.

How vision therapy can help

Vision therapy is a customized program that can improve visual memory through eye exercises that retrain the eyes and brain to work together and also develops the visual memory skills.

These exercises will not only improve a child’s visual memory issue, but help them to improve their spelling and reading, so that learning doesn’t have to be a struggle.

If your child has a visual information processing problem, they may also have a binocular vision problem.

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 Memory 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.