It's all connected!

Vision is more than sight and is a learning process. From the moment we are born we try to grasp meaning to everything around us. A baby crawling picks objects from the floor and tastes them and tries to understand the new object by its taste and also looks. Alas! a name is given to an object and now he knows what to call it. The child has used his primitive reflex, sight, sound, awareness of where the object is to identify the object and name it.

Vision is more than identifying objects. Skeffington circles highlights the four aspects of vision. Vision is the intersection of all four circles.

1. Anti-gravity: Your motor system which we use for exploration, locomotion and organization of itself within the environment.

2. Centering: This helps create the awareness of me-it relationships that come from movement through space.

3. Indentification: the performance area that provides “whatness” to the objects within the environment.

4. Speech/Auditory: permits and provides communication skills completely unique to humans.

All 4 circles are involved in everything we do all day long, it is useful to consider them in isolation when working with patients, in both diagnostic and therapeutic modes. A patient with a history of a concussion may need to be trained in all of this. A child with a learning disability probably is lacking or missed the developmental milestones required to achieve this skill.

In the words of Dr. Harold Solan, how you conceptualize the problem will determine your approach to treatment.

Any one feeling a disconnect with their sight and vision should be seen by a developmental optometrist for a visual skills assessment.

This would determine if vision therapy would be helpful or if a referral to other specialist would be required.