My Child is Near-Sighted, How Will That Affect Their Schooling?

Difficulty in school can be the result of a variety of causes, one of which being poor vision.  Near-sighted students will commonly complain of the black board being blurry but have no problem seeing things up close.  If a student is near-sighted and not wearing correction their school performance can be decreased as a result of their inability to see clearly at distance.  Testing and correcting for near-sightedness and is part of a regular examination at iSight.

What is the Relationship between Eye Muscle Problems and Learning?

Some of the mechanical visual skills which are related to reading include focusing or accommodation, eye teaming or convergence. Fatigue of one or both the systems may interfere with reading. There is also a relationship between eye movement skills such as saccadics (whereby we change fixation from one target to the next) and smooth following movements known as pursuits and reading. Children who cannot make accurate eye movements are often found to skip lines and words while reading.

The visual system was originally designed so that the peripheral vision was responsive to motion detection (danger from the jungles) with a central portion for fine discrimination (to identify the source of danger e.g., a lion). In the school environment the child is expected to ignore the peripheral portion of their visual system and pay attention with the central portion. If the child can not ignore the peripheral portion he/she becomes distracted.  Improvement in eye movement skills often results in less distraction and fewer errors of skipping words while reading.

My Child Loses His/her Place, Is That Related to the Eyes?

Reading requires very accurate saccadics which are fixations from one spot to another.  A second type of eye movement which involves tracking is also related to attention and reading.  Children who have poor eye movements are easily distracted and loose their place.  Remember, the eye movement system was designed so that peripheral vision detects motion and danger.  Imagine what happens when the system works correctly in the class room.  As soon as there is peripheral movement the eyes move towards the source of movement. This results in the complaint of poor attention.  Thus, reflexive eye movement skills must be socialized so that they do not respond reflexively to peripheral information.  In addition, speed and accuracy must be trained so that one does not lose ones place.

My Child Reverses Letters and Words, Does He See Backwards?

It has been presumed that children who reverse letters or words see them backwards.  This is false.  They have directional confusion.  In the real world direction has no meaning.  For example, a chair is a chair no matter which way it is placed.  Changing direction does not change interpretation.  In the world of language direction changes meaning.  Connect the bottom of a chair and it looks like a "b".  Turn it 180 degrees it becomes a "d", flip it upside down and it becomes a "q" and flip it again it becomes a "p".  Thus, direction changes meaning.  The difference between "was" and "saw" is direction.

What Are The Other Visual Components Necessary for Academic Achievement?

As mentioned previously we should correct all optical errors of the eyes (glasses); eliminate eye muscle problems; create smooth accurate eye movements.  In addition, we should make sure that we properly interpret what we see and use it appropriately.  These are known collectively as perceptual skills and include form perception, size and shape recognition, visual memory, visual motor integration, e.g. hand-eye coordination.