Through a child's eyes: The visual processes involved in literacy and numeracy tasks and the influence of vision impairment

The project

This project is investigating children’s visual processing and the impact of vision difficulties on early learning and achievement. Vision difficulties could include lack of appropriate spectacles or eye coordination disorders. Eye tracking provides a unique opportunity to explore functional vision processing characteristics that relate to classroom learning.

What have we done so far?

We have assessed vision difficulties and visual processing of Year 2 children undertaking a range of near vision tasks (e.g. reading, mathematics). For children experiencing vision difficulties, we have offered vision interventions (e.g. corrective lenses or vision exercises) at the beginning of Year 2 (2016). We are following these children into Year 3 (2017) to determine developmental changes in visual processing strategies in learning.

Future directions

The project is ongoing, but it is hoped that the findings will have significant policy implications and will inform intervention initiatives in education and optometry.