Sight for sore eyes may be key to learning problems

Louise Chow Yuen-man realised her son Nicholas was having trouble with his studies two years ago when she found it took him a long time just to read a short passage.

"He couldn't recall much of the text after reading, and he couldn't recognise the letter 's'. He also missed words and whole sentences when reading a passage," she says.

Therapists diagnosed Nicholas, now 12, as dyslexic. While devising exercises to improve his reading abilities, they also suggested that Chow take Nicholas to see a behavioural optometrist.

After a six-hour test, the optometrist found that Nicholas also had poor visual function skills which made it difficult for his eyes to adjust focus when switching from faraway to near objects, and vice versa.

"He has perfect vision, with no myopia, farsightedness or 'lazy eye' problem," Chow says. "But children can suffer from poor visual function skills that can adversely affect their learning progress."

Visual function skills cover abilities such as being able to train the eye along a line of text, and adjusting focus while viewing objects at different distances. So a child may have perfectly clear vision, but still have difficulty keeping their sight on track.