Vision Developments

OVD 1st Optometry Journal Accepted into the DOAJ

Optometry & Vision Development, the official journal of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development,is the first and only optometry journal world-wide to be accepted by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (http://www.doaj.org/). Dr. Dominick Maino, editor of OVD notes that, “DOAJ is a service that provides access to international quality controlled journals. This comprehensive service wants to list all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control /peer review system. DOAJ wants to increase the visibility and ease of use of scientific and scholarly journals and to promote their overall positive affect upon the scientific and clinical care community.” DOAJ currently lists more than 3435 international journals with almost 19000 searchable articles available. This unique service is funded by the Open Society Institute, SPARC [the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition], SPARC Europe, BIBSAM [National Library of Sweden] and the Axiell Library Group.

“OVD’s acceptance by this prestigious online directory”, notes Dr. Dan Fortenbacher, the current president of COVD, “recognizes the tremendous need for easy access by the world community for high quality articles concerning binocular vision, optometric vision therapy, and vision development.”  Ms. Pamela Happ, Executive Director of COVD, says that, “This singular honor recognizes COVD’s ongoing commitment to research and the publication of an outstanding journal that is now easily available to an international audience of scholars, scientists, and clinicians.” “It is no wonder that”, Dr. Maino continues, “with internationally recognized scientists such as Dr. Burkhart Fischer and the USA’s finest vision researchers such as Drs. Ken Ciuffreda and Harold Solan publishing in OVD, and an editorial board comprised of outstanding clinical scholars such as Drs. Garth Christenson, Mitch Scheiman and John Tassinari that we have attained this honor.”

About COVD

The College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD) is an international, non-profit optometric membership organization that provides education, evaluation and board certification programs in behavioral and developmental vision care, optometric vision therapy and vision rehabilitation. The organization is comprised of doctors of optometry, vision therapists and other vision specialists. For more information on learning-related vision problems, vision therapy, COVD and our open access journal, Optometry & Vision Development, please visit www.covd.org. 

Noted NY Doctor Speaks about InfantSEE

Dr. Andrea Thau, a Fellow of COVD and noted New York City optometrist, spoke about the American Optometric Association's InfantSEE program recently in a radio interview. In this podcast from that interview, she also talks about the different types of eye care professionals and the pressing need for children to have their vision evaluated.

Download WBAI-FM_Dr.Thau.5.9.08.mp3

Vision Affects How Children Learn Math Skills

Two articles just published in Optometry & Vision Development by renowned scientist/researcher, Dr. Burkhart Fischer and his colleagues strongly suggest that vision problems may affect how children acquire math skills. Both of these articles abstracts are noted below....free and full access to the complete texts of the articles can be obtained by clicking here....

Subitizing and Visual Counting in Children with Problems in Acquiring Basic Arithmetic Skills
Burkhart Fischer, Dipl. Phys., Christine Gebhardt, Dipl. Phys., and Klaus Hartnegg, Dipl. Phys.
Center of Neuroscience, Optomotor Laboratory, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany

ABSTRACT
The ability of recognizing a number of briefly presented items without actually counting is called subitizing (from lat. subito = suddenly). Adult subjects can subitize 3 to 4 items. For greater numbers the subjects begin a counting process relying on the visual memory of the test pattern, which needs increasingly more time as the number of items increases. The development of accuracy and speed of subitizing and visual counting was measured for subjects up to the age of 17 years. Furthermore, this study tests the hypothesis that children with difficulties in acquiring basic arithmetic skills exhibit developmental deficits in subitizing and/or counting. The study does not intend to investigate theories on the nature of dyscalculia even though most test children can be classified as dyscalculic.
Methods: Two-hundred-nineteen control subjects and 156 test subjects with problems in arithmetic skills in the age range of 7 to 17 years were given a visual counting task in which 1 to 9 items were presented for 100 ms. The subjects had to press a digit key on a numerical keyboard to indicate the number of items they had seen. Percentages of correct responses and response times were recorded.
Results: The analysis shows systematic differences between control and test children increasing with age. The percentage of test children performing below the 16-percentile of the age matched controls was estimated to be between 40% and 78% (increasing with age).
Conclusions: We concluded that the deficit in a basic visual capacity may contribute to the problems encountered by children with anomalies in acquiring basic arithmetic skills.

Effects of Daily Practice on Subitizing, Visual Counting,and Basic Arithmetic Skills
Burkhart Fischer, Dipl. Phys., Andrea Köngeter, Dipl. Biol., and Klaus Hartnegg, Dipl. Phys.
Center of Neuroscience, Optomotor Laboratory, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany

ABSTRACT
Background: The ability of subitizing and counting undergoes a long lasting development until
the age of 17 years. Large proportions of children with problems in acquiring basic arithmetic skills exhibit developmental deficits in the correctness and speed of this special visual capacity. The first study described in this paper tests the possibility that subitizing and visual counting can be improved by daily practice. The second study described in this paper shows that basic arithmetic skill were significantly improved in a trained as compared to an untrained
control group.
Methods: Altogether, 74 subjects (age 7 to 13 y) participated in the first study. They were given a special task for daily practice during a period of 21 days. Corresponding to the state of the subject under training the difficulty of the task was adapted. For the second study 21 children (aged 7.5 to 9 y), were recruited from a local school. All children had problems in basic mathematics and failed the test of subitizing. The training group (N=10) was given the
required training, while the waiting group (N=11) had to wait. A standard test of basic mathematics (DEMAT) was used to measure basic arithmetic skills before and after the training.
Results: The analysis of the pre-post training data revealed that subitizing and counting were significantly improved in about 85% of the subjects: they reached the normal range of the control subjects (N=133) of the same age. The second study shows that basic arithmetic skills were significantly improved in a trained as compared to an untrained control group.
Conclusion: Since the result of the second study of this paper shows a transfer from improvements in subitizing to improvements of basic arithmetic skills one may conclude that the basic visual capacity of subitizing and visual number counting contributes to the problem encountered by children with dyscalculia.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I am the editor of Optometry & Vision Development, the official journal of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. Dom Maino, O.D., FCOVD-A

And Yet Another COVD Fellow in the News

There certainly seems to be a wave of local news items about infants' vision, vision development, and vision therapy. The latest is about COVD Fellow Dr. Kevin Chauvette in the Nashua Telegraph. The article, published on March 18, covers all three of those topics and more.

One of the best aspects of the article is the quote from another optometrist, Dr. Ann Irwin, who discusses why she refers her patients who have visual problems for VT. This is the type of intraprofessional referral for specialty services that needs to be much more common in optometry, as it is in dentistry, allopathic and osteopathic medicine, and almost every other profession. There are optometrists who are excellent at corneal reshaping therapy, glaucoma management, pre- and post-refractive surgery care, and vision therapy. These optometrists have usually done significant post-graduate education to give patients the best possible care in these areas.

David A. Damari, O.D., FCOVD, FAAO

Another article on the benefits of VT

Another excellent article about vision therapy has been published, this time in the Knox County (Maine) Times. The main subject of the article is Debbie Miller, “a woman with a vision.” It tells how Ms Miller’s daughter was having difficulty with reading in second grade until Dr. Steve Franzblau diagnosed convergence excess and treated her with a program of vision therapy. Ms Miller has been a strong advocate for vision therapy ever since, first in the Fort Lauderdale area, where Dr. Franzblau, a fellow of COVD, is in practice, then in Rockport, Maine, where she now lives.
You can find information on the connection between vision and learning, and answers to your questions about vision therapy, on the COVD web site.

Article on Importance of Infant Eye Examinations

Dr. Carol Scott, a Fellow of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development in Springfield, Missouri, has written a brief but insightful letter to the editor of the Springfield News-Leader.

In the letter, and in the comments on the letter, Dr. Scott points out that school and pediatricians' vision screenings miss the majority of children with amblyopia, or lazy eye. In fact, a study by pediatricians in the journal Pediatrics in 1999 found the same thing, that pediatricians' vision screenings, while important, did not pick up amblyopia in the majority of cases.

Dr. Hellerstein visits Northeastern University (Oklahoma) College of Optometry

Dr. Lynn Hellerstein, O.D., FCOVD, FAAO, visited the College of Optometry in Talequah, OK, last month. She spoke with faculty, administration, and most of the students at the school. After her visit, Dr. Hellerstein wrote, "What a pleasure to work with students who have a good understanding of behavioral/developmental vision and VT. It is amazing to see what has been created by Dr. W.C. Maples and continued on with Dr. DeRosier and staff. Dr. DeRosier was an extern of mine a number of years ago. He introduced me as the person who gave him the VT experience which motivated him to go through a residency and teach VT in Optometry School. Great to see longer term 'results' of the importance of externship sites."
The College of Optometrists in Vision Development sends members of its Board of Directors to every school and college of optometry in the United States, and has done so every year for the last three years. This "Tour De Optometry" shows COVD members' commitment to optometric education and to a better understanding of the art and science of vision therapy and behavioral optometry. The Tour also shows students and optometric educators the possibilities of attaining advanced competency in an important area of the practice of optometry. COVD created the first board certification process in optometry. Members have been demonstrating that advance competency for over thirty years by earning fellowship in COVD, a three-year post-graduate educational and testing process. Continuing competency for Fellows of COVD is demonstrated by an annual requirement of 30 hours of continuing education, over half of which must be in the areas of vision therapy and learning-related vision disorders. For more information, see the College of Optometrists in Vision Development website.

New "Vision Blog" Under Construction

This is the new COVD Vision Developments blog. At this site, you will be able to obtain the latest information on developmental vision and vision therapy as well as a whole host of vision related topics. We intend to make this resource that has current information that will be valuable for the clinician and public as well.

We welcome the new authors to this exciting new COVD Blog!