I went to a fascinating talk by two developmental optometrists in the Washington, DC area. I had two agendas: 1) to see if I should take my son for an evaluation and 2) as a PG tutor, I wanted to understand more fully when I should refer a student for an eye exam.
I thought they had great depth of knowledge of learning disabilities and strategies children use to compensate. In their practice they often prescribe reading glasses with prisms for children. (One of my students just got such glasses but I’ve only seen him read for about 20 minutes with them. His perception is that print looks larger. I’ll have to wait until our next session.) They recommend other accommodations. They don’t have children come back for months of vision therapy. If they think it’s necessary, sometimes they prescribe exercises to do at home and sometimes a computer program with eye exercises with increasing levels of difficulty.
One of the more interesting things they said was that if you don’t read 150 words per minute, you can’t visualize what you are reading! What do all you reading experts think of that assertion?
They raised another interesting issue regarding handwriting. They said that poor handwriting especially the inability to stay on a line, poor spacing and letters that were not all one piece (ie. writing “b” as “l o”—having a gap between the two parts) is often a visual issue. I had only been seeing this as an OT and motor planning issue.
Here's one computer home vision therapy program.....
http://www.homevisiontherapy.com/
I have seen one or two posts from parents who used it with a child and were pleased with the results. It has to be prescribed by a participating optometrist. I think it handles pretty routine eye problems, but probably not every type that might be addressed in individual vision therapy. As I recall, the cost was around $300 all in, including visits to the optometrist.
Nancy
Re: went to developmental optometry lecture
Hi LindaW,
I would prefer to see the underlying skill deficit addressed via vision therapy, either computer-based or a combination of office visits and home exercises, than to first opt for an accomodation, if this were possible. One exception is if the prisms are there to bring one eye’s vision UP or DOWN to the other eye’s sight line. When the eyes are misaligned in that way, instead of side to side problems, prisms are usually necessary from what I’ve heard.
As for the letter formation, it’s a visual-motor integration issue with the visual input guiding the motor output. I had a child for a client recently who couldn’t close an O at the top until after a few weeks of VT. She kept missing the ending point as she came around. VT took care of it…..Rod
Re: went to developmental optometry lecture
Don’t know, but I teach kiddoes who don’t read 150 wpm, but do have good comprehension. I think this is another example of unqualified people making assertions publicly and muddying the water, so to speak.
Extremely disfluent reading clearly does create barriers to comprehension. I’d be wary of any absolute numbers, though I might agree that most of the time capable readers do read comfortably at this rate and with good prosody.
Re: went to developmental optometry lecture
I’m under the impression, after observation, talking to my OT and being a mom that “dysgraphia” is a combination of VPD,Motor processing and fine motor. Not necessarily ALL 3, but a combo. My daughter has all 3. She went to an OT and now her handwriting is much better; however, when copying from the board, she is very slow and if timed, she is inaccurate.
Re: went to developmental optometry lecture
This is a 50-50 or yes-but reaction.
Glad to see the vision issues addressed, and as a person with really awful visual issues myself, I am glad people are working on it with this generation.
I am always very very skeptical when someone comes out with a one-size-fits-all solution — smells of snake oil. SOME people can be helped by prisms; my brother was, way back in 1948; and some cannot, as for example that is not my problem at all. SOME people *do* need months of therapy to retrain eye muscles, and some do not. These absolute statements that you are reporting are problematic.
The 150 word-per-minute comprehension statement is, well, entirely false.
This is what happens when experts step outside their field of expertise. These folks are optometrists and thus know all sorts of things about eye function and glasses — NOT reading, unless they make a special study of the subject. Where did they get their reading information? As far as reading, they are in the same situation as the rest of the general public — if they actually take the time and look up the research, they *could* be well-informed; if they read the guff in popular magazines and talk to their local “whole-language” people at the local college, they will be spreading falsehoods, unfortunately cloaked with the respectability and authority of the medical profession.
I know for a fact this 150 wpm (and what hat did they pull that number out of?) idea is false both from personal experience and from years of teaching and observation. Personal experience — I read and comprehended books in English when I was young, and certainly couldn’t go 150 wpm through Dickens when I was still in elementary school. I learned to read French and was far less than 150wpm when I started. And I still slow way down on tricky passages. And now if I read (basic) Spanish or German, I’m way less than 150wpm. But I certainly comprehend what I am reading, and I welcome anyone to give me any accepted test to check this. Observation: I’ve taught many kids to read, and they certainly don’t start out at 150 wpm, and when they are advancing into more difficult levels, they slow down a lot, but they certainly comprehend; this can be checked both by conversation and by standardized tests. Also, I’ve worked with a few gifted dyslexics; the most recent was at perhaps 20 to 30wpm, but his comprehension was stellar. He not only understood the facts of what he was reading, but argued style and motivation and characterization, and offered various creative suggestions for alternatives.
In fact, I usually see the opposite; the fast guessers have the worst comprehension.
My friend’s son got those glasses and went from a child who hated to read to a child who loved to read. My son did not have the same response to the glasses.
I think the difference was that my son has tracking issues on top of his focusing (also called accomodation) issues, her son had his tracking issues remediated and was just struggling with focusing. I was told that the glasses help the child to pay attention to what they are reading because although they can read without the glasses they are having to overcome their vision issues and it steals from their higher level thinking. Our new doctor is tweaking his glasses so maybe they will help him now, I haven’t gotten them back yet.
Someone on another thread mentioned this computer program. I would like to learn more about it. I wonder if it is like eyeQ which is advertised on TV.