OUR EYE CARE CLINIC CAN HELP OPTIMIZE HAND-EYE COORDINATION
If you or someone you love has been described as "just naturally clumsy," you should know that poor hand-eye coordination isn't natural at all. It's a sign of a possible eye function and/or visual processing problem, one which may be highly correctable here at The Vision Center. The practitioners at our eye care clinic can discover the underlying issue and help you or your family members overcome it through vision therapy and other methods.
Eye Function, Visual Processing, and Coordination
Proper hand-eye coordination depends, not only on normal motor skills and capabilities but also on eye function and visual processing efficiency in the brain. Binocular vision, the combination of both eye's images into a focused, three-dimensional image, is critical for spatial awareness, allowing you to recognize how far away an object is and how fast it is moving toward or away from you. This skill a must for everything from hitting a baseball or catching a football to crossing the street safely, but it's not something you're born with; the ability develops in early childhood as the eyes learn to work both with each and with the brain's vision center. Peripheral vision is equally important for detecting and reacting to objects at the edge of your visual range. Visual processing skills determine how quickly and accurately you can react to this information. There is inevitably a tiny time lag, on the order of a fraction of a second, between the data input and any physical response you might make. The shorter that lag, the better your hand-eye coordination.
How Our Eye Doctors Evaluate and Treat Hand-Eye Coordination Issues
Whether your child is experiencing obvious coordination problems or you're an athlete trying to improve your coordination from good to great, our eye care center can help. A pediatric eye exam includes functional testing to check eye teaming, tracking and dominance. If your child has a problem such as amblyopia ("lazy eye"), vision therapy techniques such as eye patching and various exercises can improve visual function, thus improving hand-eye coordination. If a refractive error is making distant objects too fuzzy to recognize and react too quickly, corrective lenses may be in order.
If slow visual processing speed is hampering hand-eye coordination, our eye doctors can help that issue as well. By administering a visual processing assessment as part of an eye exam, we can evaluate the speed of information processing and prescribe specific exercises to help sharpen that skill.
Contact Our Optometrists in Fort Worth or Lubbock to Learn More Today!
Don't settle for a life limited by hand-eye coordination problems, or allow your children's development and potential to be stunted by such problems. Contact our optometrists at 806-793-1927 to schedule a functional evaluation at our vision center. We can help you get the best possible team work out of your hands and your eyes!