IVL Process

Attention field deflections most commonly develop due to poor oculomotor and visual perceptual abilities which will persist without treatment and, rarely, from delayed development where adequate oculomotor function develops after the child has been required to begin reading and other academic tasks. As effective as vision therapy is at treating the underlying cause of the problem, namely poor oculomotor and visual perceptual abilities, it often does not complete the remediation of these deflections, and the individual must be taught how to learn visually.

IVL is an extension of behavioral optometry into the field of education - it is vision therapy with a cognitive finish. The philosophy of compensatory education has been to teach to the learning style of the under-achieving student. IVL seeks to change the student's learning style to that of students that are succeeding. Most unsuccessful students fail due to deflected learning styles rather than lack of intellectual potential. These individuals need to learn how to learn.

IVL treatment involves three phases: normalize oculomotor and visual perceptual function, improve visual thinking skills, and learn to apply their visual abilities to academics as well as other areas of life.

Oculomotor and visual perceptual function is necessary to insure that incoming visual information is accurate; therefore, a program of vision therapy constitutes most of the first phase of IVL. These abilities have to be acquired before visual attention and visual thinking can be effectively established. Since much of these abilities involve physical activity, the following schematic is a good illustration of this phase:

Those individuals with poor body movement, poor balance, and retained primitive reflexes need to become skilled in these areas in order to be able to develop the more refined motor abilities that are needed for good oculomotor function, which comprises the most complex motor system of the body. These activities are also included in the first phase of the IVL program.

Visual thinking skill development is the second phase of IVL treatment. Visual attention and good visual prediction of physical experience through space and time (visual planning) is necessary for social and academic success. Vision must be master as a tool for exploring real space before it can be used in connection to spoken and written language that represents real space. The following schematic shows the process of the second phase of IVL:

Expansion of visual attention and awareness of space and time gives improved accuracy of eye movement abilities, increased social awareness, and improved organization in time and space. The ability to see the future consequences of current action is necessary for good character development. When the ability to imagine scenarios expands to include others besides themselves, self-centered behavior reduces. As one sees cause and effect, the need to physically explore decreases and impulsiveness gives way to more reflective behavior.

Cognitive retraining is the final and most fruitful phase of IVL treatment in the realm of academics. Although almost all individuals see significant improvement in academic function following a vision therapy program, many still persist in deflected non-visual learning strategies even after they are visually competent because that is the way they learned originally. The final phase of IVL is illustrated below:

IVL is unique from all other learning programs in that its emphasis is on visual cognitive function. The second and third phases of the program involve visual thinking skills and cognitive retraining. Bringing imagery into a dominant position is the foundation to success with social skills, reading, math, spoken and written language, and sophisticated memory. In short, IVL not only improves the way individuals function in academics - it improves how they function in all of life.