Functional vision screening ver 1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Functional near vision Screening in non-speaking children with severe cerebral palsy
IRAS ID
193718
Contact name
Michael Clarke
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 27 days
Research summary
Children with cerebral palsy affecting their whole body, who also struggle to produce intelligible speech, rely heavily on their functional vision to interact with the world around them, to learn and to communicate. Functional vision means the ability to perform everyday activities using looking skills. For example, this group of children might use their functional vision (looking skills) to point at a toy they would like to play with by looking at the toy and then looking back at you. This skill is called eye-pointing.
Because we know that this group of children are at risk of experiencing a range of visual difficulties it is absolutely essential to be able to identify those children who do and do not have difficulties with functional vision. However, this can be difficult to identify, and these children’s functional vision abilities, particularly in relation to communicating through eye-pointing, are often either assumed to be in place when they are not, or are not accurately identified when they are being used by children. Consequently, the provision of best individualised care for children is compromised.
Therefore, the aims of this project are to establish:
(i) a new, simple functional vision screening procedure specifically designed for young children with cerebral palsy affecting their whole body. Based on a short set of structured observations and some key questions for parents, the aim of the procedure is to quickly identify those children at risk of functional vision difficulties.
(ii) an eye-pointing classification scale that will support professionals and families to describe and classify children’s use of functional vision in relation to communication. This simple scale is based on observation of children in everyday activities.
(iii) examine the feasibility of using eye-tracking technology to measure objectively children's use of functional vision in relation to eye-pointing.REC name
South West - Cornwall & Plymouth Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SW/0237
Date of REC Opinion
15 Sep 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion