Eye Tracking Tests For Kids Reading
Has your child ever complained that reading makes their eyes tired, or that they keep losing their place on the page, even though their last eye test came back perfectly clear?
I’m Paul Graham, Owner and Principal Optometrist at Harmony Vision Care at Varsity Lakes on the Gold Coast. One of the visual skills that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough is eye tracking, and it’s something we assess regularly in children who are struggling more than expected with reading.
This article explains what eye tracking is, why it matters for reading, and how a proper assessment can reveal whether it’s contributing to your child’s difficulties, even when their eyesight itself is perfectly clear.
Key Takeaways
- Eye tracking is the ability to fixate, make saccades and follow moving targets with pursuits, and a child can have clear eyesight while still struggling with these skills.
- Signs of an eye tracking difficulty include losing place while reading, skipping lines, re-reading text, and using a finger or ruler to track along a page.
- Where testing identifies a genuine eye tracking difficulty, vision therapy can target the specific visual skills involved.
What Does Eye Tracking Mean For Your Child?
Eye tracking is your child’s ability to control where their eyes move and keep them directed at the right place during a visual task. It plays an important role in reading, writing, copying from the board and playing sport.
When we test eye tracking, we’re really looking at three different types of eye movement.
- Fixation is the ability to hold the eyes steadily on a target.
- Saccades are the quick, precise movements that shift the eyes from one point to another.
- Pursuits are the smooth movements used to follow something that’s in motion.
This is where it can catch parents by surprise. A child can have perfectly acceptable eyesight on a standard eye chart and still have real difficulty controlling these movements, because seeing clearly and controlling where your eyes look are two separate visual abilities.
Clear eyesight doesn’t automatically mean good vision.
| Eye Movement Skill | What It Does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Fixation | Holds the eyes steadily on one target so visual information can be taken in. | Focusing on a word while reading. |
| Saccades | Rapidly shifts the eyes from one point of visual attention to another. | Moving between words or from the end of one line to the start of the next. |
| Pursuits | Allows the eyes to smoothly follow a moving target. | Following a moving ball without turning the head. |
Why Do Saccades Matter For Reading?
Saccades matter for reading because they allow your child’s eyes to move quickly and accurately from one part of the text to the next. It might feel like our eyes glide smoothly along a sentence, but reading actually involves a rapid sequence of saccades and brief pauses called fixations.
During each fixation, the eyes pause just long enough to take in useful visual information. A saccade then shifts the eyes to the next part of the text, and at the end of a line, a larger saccade helps find the beginning of the next one.
There are different types of saccades at play here too. Forward saccades move a child through the text, while backward movements, often called regressions, return the eyes to something already read. Larger saccades help with changing lines or shifting visual attention elsewhere on the page.
When these eye movements aren’t working efficiently, a child may lose their place, skip words or lines, or find themselves re-reading the same text over and over.
Good reading really does depend on knowing where to look next.
How Do Pursuits Differ From Saccades?
Pursuits are different to saccades in that they involve smooth eye movements used to follow a moving target. Both are important oculomotor skills, but they do very different jobs.
Picture a child watching a ball roll across the ground. Their eyes need to follow that movement smoothly and continuously, and that’s a pursuit. The same thing happens when they’re watching a bird cross the sky or another child run across the playground.
Saccades work differently again. Rather than continuously following something, the eyes jump quickly between separate points of visual attention. We rely heavily on this when reading, scanning a page, or looking from the classroom board back down to our work.
During an eye tracking test, we assess whether a child can follow a moving target smoothly, or whether they need frequent corrective movements to stay with it. Difficulty with pursuits can show up as jerky tracking, losing the target altogether, or compensating with unnecessary head movements.
What Signs Can Suggest An Eye Tracking Test Is Required?
Persistent problems with losing their place, skipping lines or repeatedly re-reading text can suggest a child is having difficulty with eye tracking. You might also notice them using a finger or a ruler to keep their place, reading slowly, or struggling to copy information from the board.
These difficulties can genuinely make reading feel like hard work. A child may complain that their eyes feel tired, become frustrated with longer reading tasks, or start avoiding reading altogether.
It’s important to say that none of these signs automatically mean a child has an eye tracking problem. Similar difficulties can have other causes, and eye tracking problems are also different from dyslexia and other learning disorders, although a child can experience both. An eye tracking test helps us work out whether visual tracking is actually contributing to the problem.
What Happens During An Eye Tracking Test?
During an eye tracking test, we might ask your child to watch a small object as we move it in different directions, or use structured tests that require the eyes to move quickly between numbers, symbols or other targets. We’re looking closely at accuracy, speed and smoothness, as well as whether your child needs corrective eye movements or excessive head movement to keep up.
Because reading difficulties can involve several visual skills at once, we’ll often assess focusing and binocular vision at the same time. This gives us a much clearer picture of how a child’s eyes are working together during close work, rather than testing in isolation. We’re testing how the eyes work, not simply how clearly they see.
How Can Eye Tracking Difficulties Be Treated?
Eye tracking difficulties are treated by identifying the specific visual skills causing problems and working on those areas directly, there’s no single approach that suits every child. It’s worth considering a test whenever your child consistently loses their place, skips lines, or struggles to maintain their position while reading, since normal eyesight on an eye chart doesn’t rule out difficulties with eye movements, focusing or binocular vision.
Where appropriate, we may recommend vision therapy, using structured activities that target the specific visual skills a child needs to develop. This can include:
- Brock String exercises to build coordination between the two eyes
- Hart Chart drills to sharpen fast, accurate eye movements between targets
- Vectograms to develop binocular vision and depth perception
- Computer-based tracking and training programs tailored to the child’s results
- Home-based exercises to reinforce progress made during in-clinic sessions
If our assessment also picks up problems with focusing or binocular vision, we address those as part of the same management plan, and we can distinguish tracking issues from unusual involuntary eye movements such as nystagmus.
Final Thoughts
Reading asks far more of a child’s eyes than simply seeing clearly, it asks them to move with speed, accuracy and control, and when that process breaks down, effort gets mistaken for a learning problem.
If your child is working harder than they should to accomplish reading tasks, the best decision you can make today is to book an appointment with Harmony Vision Care on the Gold Coast and find out whether eye tracking problems are part of the story.
To arrange an appointment simply give us a call at (07) 5520 5900, and our friendly staff will be happy to assist you in booking a convenient time for your consultation. Alternatively, you can click the “BOOK AN APPOINTMENT ONLINE” button on our website to schedule to time by yourself.
