Wow Vision Therapy Blog

If a child or adult struggles with reading despite having 20/20 eye sight, a developmental vision evaluation can be the key to uncovering hidden visual deficits affecting reading fluency and comprehension. 

To understand how someone with normal eye sight can have a vision problem affecting reading, it’s essential to delve deeper into the intricate relationship between visual functions and reading proficiency. Beyond basic eye health and visual acuity, several visual skills play pivotal roles in effective reading. Deficiencies in these areas can significantly hinder a child’s ability to read fluently and comprehend text.

Key Visual Functions Impacting Reading:

• Binocular Vision: The harmonious use of both eyes to create a single, cohesive image. Disruptions can lead to difficulties such as convergence insufficiency, where maintaining focus on close objects becomes challenging. This often results in doubling of the print,  eye strain, loss of attention and headaches during reading tasks. 

• Oculomotor Skills: These involve the precise control of eye movements, especially saccades—the rapid shifts of the eyes from one point to another. Efficient saccadic movements are crucial for smoothly transitioning between words and lines of text. Impairments can cause readers to lose their place, skip words, or experience slow reading speeds.

• Accommodation: This refers to the eye’s ability to adjust its focus between near and distant objects. Weak accommodative skills can lead to blurred vision when reading, causing readers to struggle with maintaining clarity and miscalling easy words as well as reduced attention and concentration for reading.

• Visual Processing: The brain’s capacity to interpret and make sense of visual information. This encompasses skills like visual discrimination (distinguishing between similar letters or words), visual memory (recalling visual information), visual spatial relationships (recognizing “b” from “d” or “p” from “q”) and more. Delays in visual processing development can lead to challenges in recognizing words, remembering “sight words” and frequent letter reversals affecting reading fluency and comprehension.

• Visual-Motor Integration: The coordination between visual processing and fine motor output. This is vital for tasks like writing, where the eyes guide hand movements. Difficulties can manifest as poor handwriting, misalignment of text, or challenges in copying information from one source to another.

An excellent reference including cited research is a document from the California Optometric Association entitled: Vision and Learning and highlights how unresolved visual deficits can impair a student’s ability to respond fully to educational instruction.

For most children and adults, taking action to first have a developmental vision evaluation to identify and then treat any delays in visual development can result in a transformative improvement in reading performance. In addition, when there are multiple complicating factors, addressing the visual challenges along with a multidisciplinary approach with educational tutors, neuropsychologists, occupational therapists, speech therapists and other allied professionals working together can be the overall best approach to turn around the reading delays and overall learning ability. 

In conclusion, while traditional eye exams focus on visual acuity, it’s imperative to assess and address these broader visual functions to support reading development. By understanding and intervening in these areas, we can help children and adults to achieve their full reading potential and enhance their overall learning experience.

At Wow Vision Therapy, we specialize in the diagnosis and individualized vision therapy/rehabilitation programs that target delays in visual development in these critical areas, helping patients achieve their full potential in reading, learning and beyond.

Don’t let vision delays be the hidden barrier to reading success—schedule a comprehensive developmental vision evaluation with one of our doctors today!

Dan L. Fortenbacher, O.D., FOVDR