Brief Report: Vision in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: What Should Clinicians Expect?
Kids with autism see just as well as their typical peers, so keep your visual teaching materials the same.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team checked the eyesight of the kids with autism and 44 typically developing peers.
They used standard eye charts and lens tests in a clinic.
All kids were between 4 and 12 years old.
What they found
Both groups had the same average vision.
No child with autism needed glasses more often than the other kids.
Clinicians can expect normal 20-20 vision in most children with ASD.
How this fits with other research
Bitsika et al. (2015) also compared ASD and typical kids, but for anxiety instead of vision.
They found big anxiety differences, while M et al. found zero vision difference.
This shows autism itself does not create every health gap—some issues are real, some are not.
Bassett-Gunter et al. (2017) and Ivy et al. (2017) later showed boys and girls with autism score the same on symptom tests, backing the theme that basic traits often look alike across groups.
Why it matters
You can trust normal vision screening results for kids with autism.
No need to blame poor attention or flinching on eyesight—look elsewhere for the cause.
Keep teaching with regular print, pictures, and tablets; their eyes can handle it.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Anomalous visual processing has been described in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but relatively few studies have profiled visual acuity (VA) in this population. The present study describes presenting VA in children with ASD (n = 113) compared to typically developing controls (n = 206) and best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) in a sub-group of children with ASD (n = 29). There was no statistically significant difference in presenting VA between groups (z = -1.75, p = 0.08); ASD group median VA (interquartile range, IQR) -0.05 logMAR (IQR: -0.125 to 0.025 logMAR) and typically developing control group -0.075 logMAR (IQR: -0.150 to -0.025 logMAR). Median BCVA was -0.175 logMAR (IQR: -0.200 to -0.125 logMAR) for the ASD sub-group. Clinicians should not anticipate reduced VA when assessing children with ASD.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2015 · doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2431-8