What is a Behavioural Optometrist?

What is a Behavioural Optometrist and how can they help your family?

At Vision Potential we see many different types of patients come through our doors and each having their own concerns and symptoms. A behavioural optometrist runs additional testing on top of your stand optometry testing.

In an examination, the optometrist will assess how well you can see the chart and how healthy your eyes are and give you recommendations for your eye health. This might include further testing (Dilating drops, visual fields and or lubricating eye drops) or could even recommend glasses.

How Behavioural Optometry testing adds onto this is during the consultation the Behavioural optometrist will additionally test for –

  • How well your eyes can move (tracking)
  • Point together (teaming)
  • Endurance (Muscle Stamina)
  • How well you can see when you are concentrating on print (focusing)
  • Additionally, we also test Processing skills (How well we can see and understand the information we are looking at)
  • For children: their sequencing and letter and number reversals.
  • Seeing the bottom line of the chart but vision is still blurred.
Woman Wearing White Dress Reading Book

So why Book a Behavioural Optometry Test?

Many of our signs and symptoms can be related to our visual system and for this reason it is important to have all areas assessed. Sometimes, unfortunately seen in children more than adults our signs and symptoms can go unnoticed for prolonged periods of time and can have significant effects on our ability to learn, concentrate and develop.

Common signs and symptoms we see in Children:

  • Losing their spot when reading
  • Has difficulties completing tasks in a timely manner
  • Has poor handwriting
  • Poor attention or loses attention after short periods of time
  • Skipping or re-reading words
  • Says things like “the words are moving on the page”
  • Experiencing blurry vision after completing work on the computer, iPad or homework
  • Stating they are seeing double print or objects
  • Experiencing headaches frequently
  • Confusing words with similar beginnings
  • Substituting words
  • Declining comprehension
  • Poor retention of sight words.

Some of the Signs and Symptoms in Adults include:

  • Blurred Vision at near working distances and computer distances
  • Increased headaches after long periods of time on devices
  • Eye fatigue
  • Red, sore and irritated eyes
  • Feeling overwhelmed with workloads and taking longer to complete tasks
  • Having to take more breaks than what you are wanting to
  • Difficulties lining up excel, word, publisher files and having to increase the size of text on the computers to assist.

If you or your child are experiencing any of these signs and symptoms, we recommend you come into the clinic and have our behavioural optometrist give you a  complete behavioural eye examination. If you are unsure if this testing is right for you, please do not hesitate to contact the clinic on 0418 310 820.

Contact your Brisbane-Gold Coast Family Optometrist today!

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