Vision Skills

Vision skills are a group of neuro-muscular activities which are learned  and developed. These skills involve moving, focusing and teaming the  eyes so they may function efficiently. Vision skills include several  components. 

Fixation is the ability to direct and maintain steady, central visual  attention on a target. This basic skill is developed in infancy and  refined through the early years. Ocular motor skills are the  neuro-muscular control skills developed to point the visual system on target and move it to either follow a moving target (pursuit eye  movements), or jump from one object to another (saccadic eye movements).  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.  Eventually vision becomes the dominant sense. 

Accommodation is another vision skill involving focusing the light  entering the eyes. This combined lens neuro-muscular system is a network  integrating the eyes and the brain. Accommodation is developed rather  well by age three and further accuracy is achieved throughout the early  years of development. This function deteriorates with age, causing the  need for bifocals and/or reading glasses beginning at about age forty. 

Binocularity allows for coordinated eye movements as  targets move from distance to near. This skill has a sensory and motor  aspect. The sensory aspect is the brain’s ability to put what each eye  sees together. This gives information on location (depth perception).  The motor aspect involves convergence, where the eyes are turning in  together and divergence, where the eyes are turning out together. This  component allows both eyes to remain on the target as it moves closer  and further from the eyes.

Developmental Optometrists evaluate  the development, function, and efficiency of these vision skills.  Poorly developed or abnormal function of vision skills results in  inefficient visual performance and/or symptoms of fatigue or discomfort.  This may have a negative impact on performance in school, the work  place, sports, and activities of daily living. When properly diagnosed  these visual inefficiencies can be effectively remediated with  prescription lenses, prisms and/or vision therapy.

The symptoms typically caused by vision skill deficiencies include seeing double, losing one's place with reading,  poor or slow reading ability, discomfort (eye strain or headaches) with sustained use of the eyes, clumsiness, and poor performance in sports.

Problems processing visual information when reading, using computers or  performing any sustained visual activity might also be attributable to  vision skill problems. 

Problems may include, but not limited to, difficulty identifying similar shapes (visual discrimination), difficulty identifying different shapes (visual spatial awareness), difficulty remembering what was seen (visual memory), difficulty remembering a sequence of items or pictures from what was seen (visual sequential), difficulty visually filling in the information when what is presented to you visually is incomplete (visual closure) or difficulty with visual clutter (visual figure ground).

And he relates how deficiencies in any of these areas can be contributing roadblocks in an individual's ability to learn.