Eye Tracking

Eye Tracking describes skills that we use every day to explore our  environment, play sports, and most importantly, TO READ. Children with tracking problems have not learned to control the fine eye movements to  follow a line of print.  They will often lose their place, skip or transpose words, and have difficulty comprehending because of their difficulty moving their eyes accurately.  Many are forced to use their  fingers to follow the line because their eyes can't.

Our eyes should move automatically using the following tracking skills:

• Hold our eyes still so we can see an object and take in information about it (fixation)

• Quickly and accurately jump from one object to another (saccades)

• Track and follow a moving object (pursuits)

When we read, our eyes don’t move smoothly  across the line.  Instead, our eyes make a series of jumps and pauses as  we read.  The small jumps between words or groups of words are called  saccades.  The brief pause we make while looking at the words is called a  fixation. After a fixation, we move our eyes to the next word or group  of words—another saccade.

This very precise coordination of jumps and  pauses is controlled by our central and peripheral visual systems.  Our  central vision processes what we’re seeing in clear detail and defines  what we’re looking at. Our peripheral, or side vision, simultaneously  locates surrounding objects and let’s us know where to look. (These two  systems are sometimes referred to as the "Where is it?" and "What is  it?" systems.) In reading, our central vision processes the word, while  our side vision locates the following word and tells us where to aim our  eyes next.  The integration of these two systems is what allows us to  efficiently move our eyes along a line of print without overshooting or  undershooting, or mistakenly aiming our eyes at lines above or below. If  there is not continuous, fluid, simultaneous integration between these  two systems, reading will be jerky, loss of place will be common, and  comprehension will be poor.

As you read this sentence, your eyes stop on a  word as you take in the information, then jump to the next word and stop  again. This automatic skill gives us speed and control of where our  eyes are aiming, and is essential for efficient reading, writing,  copying from the board, playing sports and many other activities.

The infant reflexively turns the entire upper  torso toward the direction of a noise, and then gradually learns to turn  only the head to guide the visual system. Through the toddler years the  individual refines this movement system by learning to use eye muscles to replace head movement – an achievement important in visual readiness  for school. By 6 - 6.5 years of age, a child should be able to follow a target with eyes only (not following with head or nose) without being  specifically instructed to do so.  (This is one sign of visual reading  readiness).  Eventually vision becomes the dominant sense. But this cannot occur without the adequate interactions between vision and motor!  If a child has delays with motor development and coordination, it is  possible that delays in vision and fine motor control will result as well.

• Poor reading comprehension

• Loss of place when reading, writing or copying

• Use of a finger or marker when reading

• Difficulty copying from the board

• Skipping or repeating words

• Difficulty maintaining attention

• Reversing words or letters

• Head movement side to side while reading

• Poor handwriting

• Poor performance in sports

• Read erratically from right to left and left to right?

• See words move or jiggle on the page while reading?

• Need to use your finger when reading text to keep your place?

• Need to put a bookmark below the line that you are reading to keep your place?

• Can seem to keep their place when reading  books with large print and little quantity of print but frequently loses  their place when reading books with much more and smaller text

• Move your head when reading instead of your eyes?

Want to experience the amount of effort required to read for the person with a oculomotor eye tracking dysfunction?

Try Calgary Vision Therapy's Tracking Dysfunction demo

Children with tracking problems can't control  their eye movements at close ranges. The following is an example of how  their eyes move during reading, especially as they fatigue:

Eye Tracking can be thought of as a super-fine  motor coordination skill. If overall motor coordination skills are not  well developed, it is likely that fine motor (handwriting) and eye tracking skills will be poor as well.  When writing, the eyes have to  lead the hands.  If the eyes don’t move accurately and reliably,  handwriting may become slow, messy and inconsistent. One approach to  training the eye tracking system includes training the overall motor  coordination system