Behavioural Optometry

What is Behavioural Optometry?

Behavioural Optometry can help with symptoms of visual stress and binocular instability, reading, writing and copying difficulties, diagnosed learning difficulties, general classroom and workplace difficulties, visual stress from the computer (Computer Vision Syndrome), sports vision difficulties (Sports Vision Therapy), visual stress symptoms such as headache and double vision, poor coordination and clumsiness.

Can help visual problems common in:

Behavioural Optometry is an exciting, and relatively new, addition to British Optometry that has contributed significantly to our understanding of the visual aspects of learning. The Behavioural Optometric Model is an extended operational model of the visual system that explores visual performance in much greater depth, particularly in relation to classroom skills, workplace and sporting demands.

A better understanding of the role that general child development plays in mature visual competence, and the role that visual development plays in information gathering and learning, can help explain poor performance in the classroom and workplace and allow for more effective advice and treatments.

The term "Behaviour" in Behavioural Optometry relates, not to good or bad (or even right or wrong) behaviours, but simply to human behaviours in general, describing the way in which a person might choose to carry out their daily tasks.

 

Why Behavioural Optometry?

Behavioural Optometry is a specialisation within Optometry that focuses attention on the QUALITY of visual skills rather than just the ability to "see". It investigates how the brain, eyes and body work together as a team to make sense of light entering the eyes.

Although we are born able to 'see', the process of UNDERSTANDING what we see is a learnt skill. Vision develops throughout life to become the dominant information gathering and processing system of the body and Behavioural Optometry explores how efficiently we have developed the necessary visual skills, and whether they are resilient enough to cope with intense near work demands of both classroom and office.

To understand the importance of Behavioural Optometry it is necessary to understand the difference between SIGHT and VISION.

Optometrists define SIGHT as the ability of the eyes and pathways to discriminate and resolve small likenesses and differences (detail) critical to identification or determining what an object is. But VISION describes a more dynamic and interactive process, essentially a whole INFORMATION PROCESSING SYSTEM developed through experience to gain understanding of the external visual space world, in order to extract meaning and make sense of a visual situation or event, enabling us to direct or co-ordinate PURPOSEFUL action in response. Vision is a learned process from which emerges an understanding of what is seen, where it is and how to react to it. Vision is much more than simply seeing clearly. It is the entire process whereby an individual understands what he sees. Not only is vision the understanding of that which is seen, but it is also the ability to use this information to direct one's own actions and motor activities (such as reaching out to pick up a glass or jumping over a stream) accurately and efficiently with a minimum expenditure of effort and energy.

For example, in a person driving a car, vision is much more than reading license plates clearly at two hundred feet: it is the total process whereby the spatial relationships between the cars and trucks and other things around are taken in and processed by the driver to guide the car properly to its destination without an accident and with minimum stress on the driver. Vision judges the relative speeds of the other cars, and alerts the driver to a pedestrian or another car in an intersection, or a door opening rom a parked car. Vision is what directs the baseball player to swing the bat at exactly the right moment at exactly the right place in space to make contact and hit a home run. Vision is what is used by students to understand what they read and to direct the pencil across the page to answer an essay test or fill in the blanks on a quiz.

If you would like to find out more about how we can help you or your child with behavioural optometry please feel free to contact us or click to read about Diagnosing the Difficulty.