Did you know that over 80% of what we learn comes in through our visual system? Often people are diagnosed with other problems to explain their poor learning ability when really it is a problem with how their eyes are working.

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, and eye teaming, or convergence. Fatigue of one or both of these systems may interfere with reading. There is also a relationship between eye movement skills such as saccades (where we change fixation from one target to the next) and reading. People who cannot make accurate eye movements are often found to skip lines and words while reading.

The visual system was 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 his visual system and pay attention with the central portion. If the child can not ignore the peripheral portion, he becomes distracted. Improvement in eye movement skills often results in less distraction and fewer errors of skipping words while reading.

My Child Loses Her Place and Sometimes Reverses Letters (b/d). Is That Related to the Eyes?

Reading requires very accurate saccades, which are eye movements from one spot to another. People who have poor eye movements are easily distracted and lose their place. When eyes move around the page in a disorganized manner, letters and words can be interpreted backwards (ex: a “d” comes into the brain looking like a “b”). In addition, speed and accuracy must be trained so that one does not lose one’s place.

The skills are easily improvable with vision therapy. Once the information is brought into the eyes accurately with good saccades, it then must be sent back to the brain for appropriate processing. The information must be utilized and integrated with the sensory and motor areas of the brain. Defects in the perceptual (interpretation of visual system) and motor (the integration with output, e.g., hand-eye coordination) may interfere with the reading process as well. It is evident that there is more to good vision than 20/20 eyesight!>

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; and create smooth accurate eye movements. In addition, we need to make sure that we are able to properly interpret what we see. These are known collectively as perceptual skills and include form perception, size and shape recognition, visual memory, and visual motor integration (hand-eye coordination.)

To learn more about vision and learning, visit COVD here.

Also see Vision Therapy page.