The efeects of strabismus on the development of some perceptual-motor aspects in children up to seven years of age

Abstract

This paper deals with the effects of strabismus on perceptual-motor development of children from four to seven yars of age. The investigation included two groups of children (86 in each) who were matched according to age, I. Q- and emotional stability. The groups were divided into subgroups which performed A,-subtest of the Kettwing Perceptual-Motor Development Test in three different experimental situation. The situations included applications of the test in binocular situation, monocular - using the right eye (healthy children) or non-strabistic eye (strabistic children), and monocular - using the left eye in the normal sight group or the strabistic eye in the strabistic group. The results indicated no effects of the three situations on the performance of the normal sight children, while significant effects were shown on the strabistic group performance. Furthermore, a comparison showed that the two groups differed in performance significantly in all the situations, which was more prominent at a younger age. The differences were interpreted as the strabismus effects on the investigated aspect of the perceptual-motor development.