To test the benefits of lenses and visual management, our institute has conducted several scientific studies over many decades and for our patients treatment and betterment continues to do so.
Behavioral Changes in Autistic Individuals as a Result of Wearing Ambient
Transitional Prism Lenses
Child Psychiatry and Human Development, Vol. 29 (1), Fall 1998.
Abstract: A double-blind crossover design was used to assess the efficacy of wearing ambient lenses to reduce the behavioral symptoms of autism. Eighteen autistic individuals, ranging in age from 7 to 18 years, participated in the study. Behavior, attention, and orientation were evaluated at 1 ½ months, 2 months, 3 months, and 4 months. Compared to the placebo condition, the results showed a decrease in behavior problems at the 1 ½ and 2 month assessment periods and a slight loss of these benefits at the 3 and 4 month assessment periods. These findings support the prediction that ambient lenses, worn without engaging in visual-motor exercises, have positive effects on autistic individuals.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Postural Orientation Modifications in Autism in Response to Ambient Lenses
Child Psychiatry and Human Development, Vol. 27 (2), Winter 1996.
Abstract: Autistic children often display abnormal postures, head tilts, and other spatial management dysfunctions. Methods were introduced to measure spatial orientation in tasks in a group of fourteen autistic children in Montreal, Canada. Ambient lenses were found to improve posture, correct head tilts, and improve ball catching abilities. A model of spatial orientation is described and recommendations are made to incorporate ambient lenses in treatment programs.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Abnormal Saccadic Eye Movements in Psychiatric Patients as Part of a Spatial Management Disorder
Visual and Oculomotor Functions, 1994
Abstract: Abnormal saccadic intrusions for psychiatric patients during smooth pursuit tasks have been frequently reported in the literature. In this study, 26 schizophrenic, 23 affective and 8 miscellaneous psychiatric inpatients were compared to 60 controls for smooth pursuit and convergence tracking abilities. Saccadic intrusions occurred far more frequently for psychiatric patients than for controls in both tracking tasks. The findings are consistent with a model proposed by Flach and Kaplan (1983) that psychiatric patients have a spatial management disorder which adapts poorly to motion and interferes with the accurate appraisal of distances and locations.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Strabismus in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 14, (2), Summer 1999, p.101-105
Strabismus (“crossed eyes”) has been reported to be markedly elevated in individuals with autism. This article presents the findings from two studies of strabismus in autism. A clinical optometric examination of 34 individuals with autism, ages 7 to 19 years, found a strabismus rate of 50% (65 with exotropia and 35% with esotropia). A parent survey of 7,640 families found a reported incidence of 20% (18% in boys, 29% in girls). As strabismus occurs in only 2% to 4% of the general population, both studies reported here confirm the high rate of strabismus in autism. A number of concomitants of strabismus, derived from questionnaire data, are reported.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Eyes of the Storm
Taken from The Commercial Appeal
The eyes are the window to the soul, the poets have long told us. And it may never be more true than when that soul is a troubled one. Startling connections between visual perception and mental health have been revealed in recent years. Cases in growing numbers that had been considered mental in nature are being addressed through vision therapy – exercises some optometrists have long used to teach the eyes to function more effectively.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Visual Perceptual Dysfunction in Patients With Schizophrenic and Affective Disorders Versus Control Subjects
Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, Vol. 4 (4), p.422-427
Visual perception was evaluated with standard tests for 26 hospitalized patients with schizophrenia, 23 hospitalized patients with affective disorders, and 60 control subjects. Both patient groups differed significantly from the control group on low amplitude of accommodation, esophoria or exophoria, vergence duction suppression, and convergence and divergence recovery ductions. Only the affective group showed significantly reduced fusion at near distance, and only the schizophrenic group differed significantly from control subjects on disorganized left apex formation. These findings appear to confirm the presence of visual perceptual disorders that can cause disability in psychiatric patients, with important research and rehabilitation implications.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
An Optometric Approach to Motion Sickness
Optometric Journal of Revised Optometry, Vol. 112, (9), May 1975.
Since the discovery of the wheel man has been plagued with the problem of motion sickness. The clinical treatment of the problem has been left to pharmacology and its etiology has been tracked to a lack of integration of the vestibular system. I wish to present an alternative method of remediation based on existing research and clinical evidence that the vestibular sense is not only in a labyrinth but also in a visual system.
My clinical success with the individual who suffers from motion sickness has been obtained by using lens and visual therapy to give the patient the spatial control necessary to integrate the vestibular information and elicit a control of response.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Visual Perceptual Dysfunction in Psychiatric Patients
Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol. 24 (4), July/August 1983
Subjectively experienced alterations in visual perception are commonly seen in various psychopathologic condition- visual hallucinations in schizophrenic disorders and organic brain disease, concentration impairment accompanying anxiety states and states of depression, and reactions to spatial relationships in phobic states such as claustrophobia. Nonetheless, direct investigation of perceptual capacity as it may relate to psychiatric disturbance has not been extensively carried out. Mialet and Pichot did suspect that a central nervous system imbalance might be present in schizophrenic patients, reflected in abnormalities in eye tracking movements. Two kind of eye movements are normally made in the foveal tracking of targets: saccades and smooth pursuit eye movements. The former are fast, ballistic movements that bring the fovea to the target. In one study they demonstrated that of twenty-seven schizophrenic patients, three failed to track all together; of the remaining twenty-four they noted a significant increase in saccades during tracking in contrast to non-schizophrenic subjects.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Recognition and Rehabilitation
The Role of Optometry in Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Series 1 (1), October 1984
For many years, traditional psychologists, educators and vision specialists viewed visual perception as a passive process, mainly depended upon the stimuli reaching the sense organs. Today we believe that visual perception is not passive, but rather is a group of active processes coordinated by the cerebral cortex.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information.
Gaze Control
Autistic children often display abnormal posture such as toe-walking, arching of the back, and hyper-extension of the neck, as well as abnormal use of face to face gaze in social and affective relationships, head tilts, and looking from the corners of eyes. Such dysfunctions often interfere with the child’s ability to attend to social stimuli, including attempts made by therapists, teachers, and caretakers. Play, school, and family interactions are compromised by the visual dysfunctions which prevents the child from experiencing an integrated visual percept of events and objects in their environment. When severe enough, children lose track of their own position in space, compromising their posture, as well as recognition of the consequences of their own actions.
** Contact The Center for Visual Management for the full length article or for more information. |