Focusing Skills
How the eye focuses
A small muscle surrounds the lens of the eye. When you look at a distant object this muscle relaxes. This causes the lens to become flattened and this flat lens focuses distant objects. When you look at close objects the muscle contracts. This causes the lens to bulge or become more round. This bulged lens allows you to focus near objects.
When focusing goes wrong
Ideally the focusing system should respond QUICKLY and ACCURATELY when you shift your gaze from far to near and from near to far. Sometimes the focusing system changes very slowly or not at all. This can cause objects to blur for a short time. During this time of blurry vision it is difficult to VISUALLY FEEL and understand the objects being looked at. If you spend a lot of your attentional energy trying to get and keep things in focus, then there is less attentional energy available for you to understand what you are looking at. Focusing problems may also lead to tired eyes or headaches.
Why people need bifocals
If you more than 40 years of age, then you may not be able to focus your eyes through the RED pair of lenses. Books and words may be blurry for you if you do not have a proper pair of reading glasses or bifocals. This is because the lens muscle system slowly looses its ability to change the focus of the eye throughout our life, and sometime between 40 - 50 years the system no longer has enough focusing ability to clear words and near objects. Reading glasses or bifocal lenses perform the focusing that the eye is unable to accomplish.