What is a Behavioural Optometrist?

Behavioural optometrists have a special interest in all aspects of the functional visual skills and visual processing skills that relate to learning. They also have skills which enhance their ability to manage children with developmental delay, brain injured adults and the vision demands of sporting activities.

Dyslexia and Vision

There are many different definitions of dyslexia. I believe the term should be exlusively applied to severe reading difficulties caused by any combination of vision, auditory and/ or language processing deficits. Functional visual problems such as refractive error, focussing, eye-movement and eye-teaming disorders do not cause dyslexia.

However, functional visual problems are often found in childre who have dyslexia. A certain percentage of all children, good and poor readers, have visual problems. These problems effect children’s ability to concentrate and learn and will obviously be an additional barrier for the dyslexic reader.

The incidence of visual problems may even be higher in children who have reading difficulties and dyslexia. It is thought that the emotional stress involved when a poor reader attempts to read, selectively effecte the focussing muscle in the eye and leads to a breakdown in the normal balance between focussing and binocular alignment. The exact nature of the visual problem that results can vary from over ot under convergence, to over or under focussing, or any combination of these weaknesses.

What Should Parents Watch Out For?

The signs and symptoms of functional visual problems are many and varied. Sometimes, in more advanced conditions, the child may become aware of blurred vision or headaches or sore eyes. Some children may experience these symptoms but may not be aware that they are abnormal. Just because your child does not complain of a vision problem does not guarantee that no problem exists.

Sometimes the child will exhibit signs of vision difficulties including a close working distance or distorted head posture. If the eyes are becoming tired, you may observe your child rubbing their eyes or the eyes may become red.

Some behavioural signs to look for include;

• Untidy, irregular handwriting that becomes progressively worse
• Your child’s reading performance deteriorates as the eyes become tired
• Slow reading
• Frequent losses of place
• Poor comprehension
• Poor attention,
• Becoming easily frustrated or
• Lack of interest in near visual tasks

may all be signs of visual difficulties.

Visual processing problems may result in difficulty learning the alphabet, poor recall of frequently seen words, reading words backwards, reversals of letters and numbers and poor spelling of irregular words.

How do parents find a suitable optometrist?

Some of the vision problems which interfere with reading performance are subtle and not all optometrists routinely test for these defects. Similarly, visual processing deficits will not be found in a standar eye examination. Generally optometrists who specialise in children’s vision will be known by the local remedial teachers and educational psychlogists.

The best recommendation is always word-of-mouth referral from other parents, teachers, educational psychologists, speech pathologists or occupational therapists.

A good resource for finding a behavioural optometrist is the website of the Australian College of Behavioural Optometerists at http://www.acbo.org.au