4 Learning-Related Vision Problems That A Developmental Optometrist Can Help Correct
It is easy to jump to the conclusion that your child has a learning disability when they don't perform as well in school. However, that may not always be the case, and sometimes, it has everything to do with specific vision problems.
Fortunately, an optometrist, and more specifically, a developmental optometrist, can help. Some of the learning-related visual problems that an optometrist can help to identify and manage include the following.
1. Tracking Or Oculomotility
A developmental optometrist will check on your child's ability to track or smoothly follow a moving object and whether or not they can do accurate eye jumps across different points. Impaired visual tracking will make it difficult for your child to follow the content in a book. Reading and even writing one line and moving to the next may be a problem.
2. Visual Perception
Does your child have the ability and the skills to interpret, analyse and understand what they see with their eyes? Visual memory, visual closure, figure-ground, form constancy and visual discrimination are among some of the core elements of visual perception. A deficit in visual perception may manifest in your child's inability to identify objects, shapes and patterns and an inability to discriminate between foreground and background in presentations, among other things.
3. Visual Focusing And Accommodation
A developmental optometrist will assess how well and how fast your child can change their focus when looking from an object at a distance, such as a chalkboard, to an object near them, such as their desk, and back and forth between the two.
Problems with visual focus and accommodation can also make it difficult for your child to maintain focus on one object for an extended period. As a result, reading a full page can seem like quite the task.
4. Eye Teaming Or Binocularity
If their eyes cannot team up and coordinate well to maintain single vision, then your child may complain of double vision and words overlapping on the pages. The words and symbols will be jumping at them from the pages, making reading and writing quite difficult.
With visual therapy, a developmental optometrist can help to manage and correct these and other vision problems for a better learning experience. Visual therapy is quite effective, and if you suspect that your child may be experiencing any of the issues highlighted here, you should book an appointment with an optometrist as soon as possible.
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