Following Movements and Saccades

When following movements or saccades are expected as a response their quality needs to be tested first. As stimuli one can use large playthings like Lilly&Gogo dolls or the child's favourite toys. If eye movements have not yet differentiated from the head movements, head movements are accepted as following (tracking) movements and saccades.

Figure 18. Lilly and Gogo available at edition-bentheim, Frühförderung,
at http://www.edition-bentheim.de.

Saccades can be observed in a play situation like the following: The tester entices the child to look at her/his face. When the child is fixating on the tester's face an interesting stimulus like the Lilly finger puppet is presented next to the testers face. If the child shifts fixation to the doll, it is shown to the child for a short while. Then the child is made aware of the tester again and when the child is looking at the tester, the Gogo finger puppet is presented on the other side of the face. If there is a difference in the saccades to right and left it is discussed with the child's ophthalmologist. If saccades up and down are symmetric, tests are presented in vertical direction.

It should be kept in mind that large saccades observed in play situations are different from the minute saccades used during reading. The planning and execution of saccades occurs at the same time as the child is using sensory functions to perceive the word to be read and simultaneously the location of the next word, whereupon the saccade should land.