Eye coordination is important for forming a single image, and lack of it can cause double vision or lack of depth perception. Poor eye coordination can be caused by illness, injury, or lazy eye syndrome. Symptoms include trouble catching a ball, rubbing your eyes, and squinting. Treatments include correcting vision, eye muscle exercises, surgery, and wearing a patch or dark lens. Some people can control their eye coordination to enjoy stereogram images.
Eye coordination, by definition, means that a person’s eyes work together cooperatively to form a single image. This is what people with perfect vision typically experience, so it can be helpful to say that lack of eye coordination causes problems such as double vision or lack of depth perception. This is why eye coordination is the key skill that makes every eye movement precise, timely, and well coordinated.
Poor eye coordination can have different causes. In infancy, vision development may be lopsided because one eye is nearsighted; however, the child adjusts by ignoring the blurry image. This can lead to lazy eye syndrome, in which the eye muscles don’t even try to move the weaker eye. Some adults may lose eye coordination due to illness or traumatic injury. In many cases, this is a temporary problem that resolves when the cause is treated and cured. For example, a person who receives a concussion may experience temporary double vision along with other symptoms.
Poor eye coordination can manifest itself in different ways. Babies may not realize they have a problem if it’s been present since birth. Signs of impaired vision development in childhood may include trouble catching a ball, rubbing your eyes, getting tired quickly while reading, or frequently squinting. The American Optometric Association recommends that children have their eyes tested at 6 months of age and again at 3 years of age.
Adults may not relate the onset of symptoms such as mild dizziness, headache, or irritability to vision problems, but it’s often a good indicator of distress. Eyestrain can occur if some of the six major eye muscles become weak, resulting in poor eye alignment, and putting extra effort to compensate for a weak muscle causes you to feel tired or strained. Of course, the sudden onset of double vision is another symptom that often causes serious concern.
Various treatments are available to improve eye coordination. In the simplest cases, simply correcting myopia or farsightedness can solve the problem. Eye muscle exercise is the solution for some, while others may require surgery. Prism lenses in eyeglasses can correct where the image forms in the eye. In severe cases, you may need to wear a patch or dark lens to keep one eye from interfering with the other.
Some people can control their eye coordination well enough to enjoy the stereogram or “magic eye” images. The secret is to lock your eyes until two images merge and keep the image in focus. This requires very conscious eye alignment checking. Conversely, most activities require quick, automatic eye movements to be successful, whether it’s catching a ball or reading.
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