Vision plays an important role in successful academic performance. Vision is the ability to understand what one sees, and is a learned process. A large portion of learning happens visually in traditional classroom settings. When I ask parents about their child’s vision I often get responses such as “His routine eye exam was 20/20.” It is important to understand that a routine eye exam only measures how well one can see the eye chart, meaning certain sizes of letters that can be seen at 20 feet. It does NOT detect other vision problems that can interfere with learning. Specifically, a typical routine eye exam can’t detect problems with eye movement control (needed for tracking along lines as one is reading/writing), focusing near (needed for copying from the board), maintaining visual focus (needed to keep up with the material being learned and prevents the eyes from fatiguing), eye teaming (needed for the eyes to work together), and depth perception (needed to accurately judge distances of objects).
It is important to identify the symptoms that could signal a possible vision problem. Some of these are listed below:
• Frequent loss of place when reading
• Takes much longer doing homework than expected
• Skips words or repeats lines when reading out loud
• Has short attention span when reading and doing schoolwork
• Reverses letters such as b’s and d’s
• Omits or substitutes small words like “of” for “for”
• Frequent eye rubbing or blinking when reading or doing schoolwork
• Problems catching or hitting balls
• Clumsiness with physical activities
• Avoids reading
• Complains of eyes being tired easily
• Poor posture when working close
• Complains of blurring or double vision when reading or writing
• Squints when doing near work
• Poor reading comprehension
• Fails to recognize the same word in the next sentence
• Holds books or other homework materials very close when reading/working
Many students’ visual abilities are under-developed and thus not up to the level needed to face the learning demands of classroom situations. If your child has a history of struggling with reading and learning, a comprehensive eye exam by a Developmental Optometrist is warranted.
Such an examination will determine whether poor visual skills are interfering with the learning process. Lastly, the above listed symptoms could also be indicative of other learning challenges that can be assessed in a comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation. Refer to our test services page for more information.
Maria Kanakos, Psy.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist