Eye Movement Skills

Studies show that children who have problems with reading, spelling, writing, math, and/or many social skills are often deficient in the execution of many types of eye movements.

• They do not work both eyes well together as a team (binocularity)
• They move their eyes asymmetrically when trying to converge (point the eyes closer)
• They diverge (point the eyes further away) their eyes
• They have difficulty keeping a target clear where they are looking (focusing and accommodation)
• They make errors when trying to fixate or track a moving object (saccades and pursuits)

These poor eye movement skills play a large role in understanding the problems that children encounter when attempting to perform school work and other visual tasks. They have caused their vision to perform inaccurately, to be much less useful for them than for other individuals, and to cause a variety of visual perceptual problems.