Understanding Vision
Vision is much more than 20/20 eye sight. Good functional vision involves clarity of vision along with the following:
- Focusing – changing focus near to far, or maintaining near focus for extended periods of time
- Eye tracking – accurate movement of the eyes, which is essential in reading and sports
- Binocular vision – eye-teaming: both eyes pointing together at the correct place in space
- Double vision is a condition that is often overlooked, but can cause serious avoidance of near work (reading)!
- Strabismus, or an eye turn, is a binocular vision problem which can be treated with vision therapy
- Amblyopia, or lazy eye, is also a binocular vision problem which can be treated with vision therapy
- Visual perception – a big category that includes the following:
- Visual discrimination, or “just noticeable differences”
- Visual memory
- Visual sequential memory – remembering a series of objects, letters or numbers
- Visual figure ground – such as hidden pictures, or finding an object in a busy room, or even attending to the teacher when the room is full of distractions
- Visual closure – seeing part of the information and inferring the rest of it
- Body knowledge – understanding where I am in space
- Bilateral integration – coordinated movement of both sides of the body
- Space awareness – understanding where things are in space
- Eye-hand coordination – letting vision guide your movement, which is essential for proper handwriting and sports activities
- Vestibular / balance – helping the visual system be the “top dog” of the vestibular triad, which helps with motion sickness, car sickness and head injury rehabilitation
