Diane Serex-Dougan, OD, FCOVD | Behavioral Optometry | Optometric Vision Therapy | Maryland

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The NFL's Most Exciting Receiver

January 16, 2009

The Wall Street Journal Reports.

While they're not over yet, this year's National Football League playoffs have already produced one spectacle for the ages: the remarkable ability of Arizona Cardinals' wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald to pluck passes out of the sky.

.......

But after 20 years of studying the eyes of elite athletes, and after taking into account two unusual opportunities Mr. Fitzgerald had as a child, one prominent researcher believes his catching talent has less to do with his hands and feet than his eyes and brain. The two catalysts for Mr. Fitzgerald's success may, in fact, be his stint as a teenage ballboy for the Minnesota Vikings and the summer days he spent at his grandfather's optometry clinic.

Joan Vickers, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Calgary, studies the eye movements of elite hockey goaltenders, baseball hitters, and tennis and volleyball players by having them play while wearing special goggles equipped with cameras that film their eyes. After watching Mr. Fitzgerald's 166-yard performance against the Carolina Panthers last week on television, she believes his talent reflects a mastery of two cognitive skills she has observed -- one called "the quiet eye" and another known as "predictive control."

The key to 3-D vision

A visual impairment that condemns children to see in only two dimensions can go unrecognized for years and be mistaken for stigmatized disorders.

LA Times
By Susan R. Barry
June 22, 2009

I was 20 years old and a college student before I learned that I did not see the world like everyone else. I had been cross-eyed as a baby, but three childhood surgeries made my eyes look straight. Because my eyes looked normal, I assumed I saw normally too. But, in fact, I was stereoblind -- unable to see in three dimensions.,

That means I could not see the volumes of space between objects. Instead, things in depth appeared piled one on top of another, making me feel nervous and confused in cluttered environments. As a child, I didn't understand why my friends were so entertained when they looked through a View-Master. I didn't see Disney characters or Superman popping out at me. All I saw was a flat image.

When I got older, my gaze -- particularly at a distance -- was jittery, making it difficult to read signs while driving. I was always disoriented and easily lost.

The biggest effect of my vision was on my performance in school. I had trouble learning to read and did poorly on standardized tests. These problems were blamed not on my vision but on a lack of intelligence, and I was put in a class with other problem children.