Functional Vision 101

Eye Teaming

When our eyes aren’t working together as one “unit”, we have trouble maintaining a single image; words appear to move or we may experience double vision; our brain may “suppress” (ignore) information coming into one eye. It will affect our depth perception.

Focusing

When our eyes don’t focus well, it is hard to switch from near to far objects and keep both clear, such as when copying from the board. Our eyes fatigue easily because our focusing system struggles to keep things clear.

Tracking

When our eyes don’t track (move) well, it is hard to keep our place when reading—our eyes tend to jump around, skipping words or lines; it is hard to follow a moving object, such as a ball.

Visual Processing Skills

These skills are very important to learning.  They are a set of skills we use to gather and organize visual information from the world around us.  They help us know where we are in space so we can catch a ball. Can you ride a bike? Balance is affected by our ability to process what we see. It involves using both sides of your body. Visual discrimination, another visual processing skill, helps us learn the difference between a “b” and “d”, or “was” from “saw”, things that look similar, but are different. We need visual memory to help remember our math facts and spelling words. We need visual processing skills to learn to read, copy from a book or the board, and so much more.