History
Behavioral optometry is considered by some optometrists to have its origins in orthoptic vision therapy. However, Vision therapy is differentiated between strabismic/orthoptic vision therapy (which Orthoptists and Ophthalmologists practice) and non-strabismic vision therapy. A.M. Skeffington was an American optometrist known to some as "the father of behavioral optometry". Skeffington has been credited as co-founding the Optometric Extension Program with E.B. Alexander in 1928.
Part of behavioral vision care is concerned with impact of visual "skills" on performing visual tasks. Various behaviors and poor performance during visual tasks may suggest non-optimal visual skills. For example this could manifest as eyestrain symptoms experienced during visual tasks, or adopting poor posture (e.g. leaning in too close to visual material). Another example, could be difficulty understanding maps, difficulty recalling visual information, difficulty completing jigsaws and difficulty drawing/copying/interpreting visual information.
Claims have been made that behavioral optometry can aid with cognitive, behavioral or language disorders such as ADHD and dyslexia, although there is no evidence to support these claims. It is therefore popular among parents who may not want their children to be stigmatized by being labeled with a cognitive or language impairment, as it claims that poor vision is the real cause of their disorder.
Read more about this topic: Behavioral Optometry
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)