Visual Efficiency and Academic Performance in Children

Gone are the days when vision problems were simply about being near or far-sighted. Today, we delve deeper into understanding how important it can be for your child to see clearly at school. At Mind-Body-World Optometry in Scarsdale, NY, we understand how visual efficiency influences academic performance in children. Learn more about eye health and academic performance below.

How Does Visual Efficiency Affect Academic Performance in Children?

Visual efficiency doesn't just pertain to the ability to see clearly. It also incorporates other visual skills, including visual acuity, eye coordination, focusing, visual processing speed, and more. The interaction of all these facets plays a key role in a child's academic progress.

Without good oculomotor skills (the ability to control the movement of our eyes), children often struggle with keeping their place while reading, or shifting attention between the classroom presentation and their personal notes.  Without good (eye-)focusing skills, children struggle to maintain their concentration for extended periods, a crucial skill during lengthy school hours. Inefficient binocular vision might be instrumental in causing fatigue or headaches when reading, directly affecting how much information a child can absorb and retain.  With inefficient visual skills, reading comprehension suffers, homework takes hours and hours, and children may avoid completing their work, or even reading for pleasure.  Even less visually-intensive subjects, like math and science, rely heavily on spatial relationships and mental imagery generated by strong visualization skills. We develop these visual information processing skills by learning to make use of our peripheral vision while attending to central details.

Optometric Vision Therapy

The good news is that our pediatric optometrist and team of vision therapists can provide vision therapy to help your child learn to see with greater ease and clarity.  More importantly, children learn the vital skills of managing their visual attention, processing a broad volume of visual information, and becoming more self-directed in their education. Don’t let poor visual skills dominate your child’s academic career. Vision therapy can give your child the very best chance for academic success.  Under Dr. Slotnick’s direction, children and parents come to understand that this is not “eye therapy.”  Vision therapy is brain therapy, with a healthy mixture of education, physical activities, and neuro-muscular training.  Patients retrain the brain to make more efficient use of the eyes as tools for gathering information.  At the same time, strategies are introduced to train patients of all ages on more effective ways of processing visual information over the visual field and managing visual imagery internally.

Vision Therapy and Eye Care with a Pediatric Optometrist Near You

At Mind-Body-World Optometry in Scarsdale, NY, we understand the importance vision plays in your child's academic progress and we are committed to providing eye care to help your child's visual development. Contact our office today to book your child's functional vision evaluation with our eye doctor. Call us at (914) 874-1177 to take your first step towards eye care and vision therapy with our capable, compassionate team.  Distance and travel are not an obstacle if you live beyond our local Westchester County area.  We are pleased to offer remote consultations, remote-based therapy sessions, and to help you find a pediatric optometrist near you.