Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose:To determine if childrens' self reported saccadic related symptoms correlate with DEM scores. To determine the severity of saccadic related symptoms in a non clinical population. To determine prevalence of children falling below the 35 percentile of the DEM normative values. Methods: Approximately 250 sixth grade children from 2 Fullerton public schools were invited to participate in a free Binocular Vision Screening occurring at their school. Informed consents and CIRS Symptom Surveys were sent home with the children and a 40% positive response rate was achieved. This high return rate may be due to the provision that all returned forms both with or without consent will be entered in a raffle with significant value prizes (up to $100) Ninety children completed the entire screening. Retinoscopy, visual acuity, neutralized CT, NPC, Push Up Accommodative Amplitude, PRV & NRV at near, Binoc and Monoc Accom Facility and DEM were tested. Results: This report will limit itself to DEM findings. DEM's correlation to the following saccadic related symptom survey questions was as follows : a)Do you feel you read slowly? r=0.15, p=0.13; b)Do you lose your place while reading? r=0.16, p=0.13 c)Do you have to re-read the same line of words when reading? r=0.15, p=0.15. Correlation to the average score of these 3 questions: r=0.18, p=0.08. The frequency with which children experienced these 3 symptoms at a level of "sometimes" was 21% ; and a combined "often" and "always" was12.2% .A similar profile for each question alone was found. 3)Prevalence of DEM scores falling below the 35th normed percentile was 49%. Average score was 1.18, stdev 0.164.(normed ave=1.15,sd 0.13). There was no significant correlation of the DEM score to any of the other tests. Conclusions: This is the first report of the correlation between reading eye movement symptoms and the DEM. Although a self selected population due to required positive consent, this samples’ average DEM score closely matches the normative DEM sample average score suggesting an unbiased sampling. Given this, a fail rate of nearly 50% at the 35 percentile level and 10% of sixth grade children experiencing failure to read smoothly and accurately at an "often and always" level points to a need for greater screening for this condition. Very low r values and non significant correlations with the other more common oculomotor tests reinforces this finding.
Keywords: binocular vision/stereopsis • eye movements: saccades and pursuits • reading