Vision Therapy

Three scientific issues must be addressed in the evaluation of orthoptic training or vision therapy: whether available evidence supports the proposition that visual defects have a role in the development or maintenance of reading disorders; whether or not training alters the identified visual defects; and whether treating the visual defects results in improved reading comprehension. This latter was judged to be the most important issue for the assessment.

The available evidence did not demonstrate that visual anomalies cause learning disabilities or were even more common among persons who had learning disabilities. If, as a few studies suggested, atypical eye movements are associated with learning disabilities, they may be secondary or compensatory to an information processing deficit. This suggests the possibility that vision therapy could be detrimental by disrupting a compensatory mechanism.

The available evidence did not support the conclusion that orthoptic training improves reading comprehension. Specifically, the study population in the available published literature was not well defined. While the subjects were reported to be poor readers, it could not be determined whether they actually had a verifiable diagnosis of a reading disorder. In addition, objective outcomes of reading comprehension were lacking in the published studies. Finally, several studies reported no improvement in the treatment groups compared to the control groups.

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