Specialty Services
At Marston Optometry, your vision is our priority. We offer a broad range of treatment options such as comprehensive eye exams, contact lens fitting, management of glaucoma, macular degeneration, and other medical conditions, as well as glasses and contacts.
We also specialize in children’s vision and learning.
Please select from the following list to learn more about our services. For additional information about any of these services, or to set up a consultation please call or email our office.
Child Vision & Learning
Sports Vision
Children Vision & Learning
It is important to detect and correct vision problems in young children. Children acquire 80% of their learning through their vision. Allowing your child’s vision to go unchecked could put them at risk for future developmental problems.
Due to concerns about the impact of undetected vision problems in children, The National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) published a statement advising all schools recognize that “early diagnosis and treatment of children’s vision problems are fundamental components to readiness for academic learning.” The National PTA emphasized that vision screening is not an acceptable substitute for a professional vision exam. Many vision issues are silent, progressing without much warning. Just because you or your child have not noticed a significant change in his or her vision does not mean they do not need regular eye exams. Your child should have his or her vision checked at six months, then at age three and annually thereafter.
According to the American Public Health Association, one-in-four children have undiagnosed vision problems that negatively impact their ability to learn. Sixty percent of children diagnosed with learning disabilities also had undiagnosed vision problems. Occasionally, vision problems can be misdiagnosed as ADD (attention deficit disorder), ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), or dyslexia.
Signs and symptoms of learning-related vision problems include:
- Difficulties with reading;
- Gets bored or frustrated while reading;
- Has a very short attention span and can’t focus on the task at hand;
- Reverses words, numbers, or letters;
- Can’t remember how to spell words;
- When reading, he or she skips words or phrases, loses his or her place and sometimes skips entire paragraphs;
- Low reading comprehension scores; or
- Despite tutors or medication has shown no improvement in reading.
Along with diagnosing nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, eye health conditions, and binocular and focusing skills, a developmental eye examination will determine other possible issues that may be the cause of these symptoms.
Dr. Shea Ferree Carney specializes in Pediatric Development Vision and the remediation of these problems.
Click Logo to go to Dynamic Vision Therapy Website
Sports Vision
Many athletes are unaware they can improve their sports performance by enhancing certain facets of their eyesight. Correcting or improving your vision can mean the difference between winning and losing or simply enjoying the activity more. Listed below are different aspects of vision and how they relate to sports as well as exercises to enhance your vision.
- Dynamic visual acuity is your ability to see fast-moving objects. This is critical in sports like table tennis, hockey, and racquetball. You can improve dynamic visual acuity by taping letters to a ceiling fan and try to identify the letters while the fan spins at different speeds.
- Visual concentration is defined as your ability to ignore distractions. Your eyes naturally react to any movements within your field of vision (almost 180°, forward-facing). When you play a sport, the onlookers, other players, referees, or movement within your field of vision can distract you. You can improve your visual concentration, by telling a friend to stand off to the side and wave their hands and jump around while you practice.
- Eye tracking involves following an object with your eyes and keeping your head as motionless as possible. Sports like racquetball, where the ball is moving very quickly, require excellent eye-tracking ability. If you have good eye tracking ability, you can improve your balance and your reaction times. Keep a book balanced on your head while watching a ball in flight to improve your eye-tracking ability.
- Eye-hand and eye-body coordination relates to how your muscles and limbs react to the information you obtain visually. Timing and body control are part of eye-hand and eye-body skill. If you want to improve this part of your vision, jump up and down on a mattress or trampoline and have someone throw you a tennis ball from various angles while you try to catch it and toss it back.
- Visual memory is the ability to comprehend, process, and retain in your memory a fast-paced and complex montage of people and things around you. To play sports like basketball, hockey, and soccer you need a good visual memory. Your visual memory allows you to pinpoint and update in your mind where everyone, teammates, and opponents, are located on the playing field. To improve visual memory, find a colorful, preferably a complicated image on the internet. Look at it for a few seconds, then look away and try to reconstruct in your mind what you saw and where the objects in the photograph are located. As you improve, reduce the amount of time you allow yourself to view the image and reconstruct it mentally.
- Peripheral vision is the ability to see things that are not what your eye directly focuses on. It is what you see out of the corner of your eye. Peripheral vision is what you use when you may be focusing on the ball in a soccer game, but can see an opponent or teammate running toward you from the left or right. To practice improving your peripheral vision, try to watch TV by turning your head to the side rather than staring directly at the screen.
- Good visual reaction time is what allows a batter to hit a fastball. Visual reaction time is the time it takes for the batter to see where and how fast the ball is approaching and react by swinging the bat and hitting it. In other words, how fast your brain sees, interprets, and responds to what you see with your eyes. To improve your visual reaction time, have a friend stand several feet behind you with a ball. Have them through the ball and yell “now!” You must turn around and catch the ball as soon as you hear them shout.
- Focus flexibility lets a quarterback focus on the locations of his receivers despite their different locations and distances from him. To improve your focus flexibility, tape a photograph or a page from a magazine on the wall at eye level and stand fifteen feet away. Hold another photograph in front of you but slightly to the left or right so you can see both objects. Quickly switch your focus from one to the other. The more you practice this, the better your focus flexibility becomes.
- Depth perception allows you to judge distances of objects from you and from each other. You need good depth perception to play basketball, golf, soccer, field hockey, and Lacrosse. You can improve your depth perception by trying to insert a toothpick into a straw that someone holds about two feet in front of you. The object is to insert the toothpick as quick as you can into the straw.
By doing these exercises, you can improve your vision, and in turn, improve your sports performance.
