Ocular Motility involves the 6 external muscles around each eye working equally to move the eyes into different positions (up, down, left right, and 4 corners). Problems with ocular motility can occur following nerve palsies or caused by mechanical restrictions of the muscles to move (e.g. trapped muscles).

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​Eye Tracking, describes the eye movements that allows a person to fix their eyes on an object and smoothly follow it as it moves, or follow a sentence on a page from left to right. Eye tracking also includes eye-hand coordination skills.

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Eye tracking skills are particularly important in sports such as football, soccer and tennis.

 

Symptoms of a breakdown in eye tracking include: 

1. Skipping over words when reading,

2. Re-reading words or lines unintentionally,

3. Over-reliance on finger or ruler to keep place while reading (in children), and

4. Excessive head movements during desk work.

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Eye Tracking skills are made up of 3 components:

• Fixation - keeping the eyes steady without looking away from a target/object.

• Saccades - accurate jumps between objects without overshooting or undershooting.

• Pursuits - the ability of the eyes to remain fixated on a target/object as it moves.

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