Effects of Training of Eye Pursuit Skills on Reading Capacity of Children with Oculomotor Dysfunction at Primary level

Abstract

The study was experimental in nature whereby Pretest-Posttest Control Group Design was applied. The population comprised of the children having poor reading capacity in addition to Oculomotor Dysfunction at primary level between the ages 5-14 years. Poor readers with the score of percentile rank below 15 or below average accuracy on KD Test were identified as Children with Oculomotor Dysfunction (OMD Children). Simple random technique was used to select a sample of 20 OMD Children from a pool of 50 OMD Children. The sample of study was divided into experimental and control group with 10 OMD children in each. Nova Southeastern University College of Optometry (NSUCO) Oculomotor Test was administered to appraise the level of Eye Pursuit Skills of the participants of both groups before and after the intervention. Manual and computer animated training of eye pursuit skills was given for 50 minutes per day for 7 days a week for 6 weeks to the experimental group only. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was employed to make a comparison between reading capacity of both groups. The results indicated that there was significantly positive effect (p<0.05) of the training of eye pursuit skills on the reading capacity of Children with Oculomotor Dysfunction.