Behavioural Optometry
Visual Development
Through visually directed movement through space and exploration of space, and by a process of comparison and matching of visual input with spatial information from other sensory and motor processes, VISION develops to become the DOMINANT information gathering and processing system, and the manual system (the hands) becomes a tool to complete tasks (the output system for the visual system) that the visual system cannot complete on its own, such as writing, or to confirm or contradict where there is doubt about the accuracy of visual information.
When we 'touch' our world with our eyes, vision will trigger sensory-motor responses in other sense systems that may enable us to smell, taste or feel on object simply through seeing it. Vision should trigger a sense of all that we 'know' of the object through past experience so that we truly 'understand' that object. And in time the visual system no longer even requires the physical object to be present. Through visual representation, visual recall, visual imagery, visual manipulation, visual planning and anticipation a person can problem solve and can 'picture' or imagine objects and events he has never actually seen.