Tyri0n wrote:
I went to an optometrist who says a lot of my functionality (as opposed to social) problems (clutziness, bad driving, horrific sense of direction, etc.) is not because of my autism but because I have one eye that essentially is never used, so I don't have any spatial awareness. Apparently, I have strabismus also (my eyes don't move together; my left eye is turned out a lot of the time), which caused my left eye to shut off and never develop properly, in spite of always showing up as having 20/20 or better vision on eye exams.
I'm wondering if this is a common problem in ASD's, or if it's somehow related to ASD.
This is a neurological problem not an eye problem. Mine are the same way. When I was young I they prescribed glasses to fix it but it didn't work even though before glasses I had 20/10 vision. My eyes adjusted to the glasses & the strabismus continued & my eyes won't adjust back.
At age 26 I developed my own eye exercises to fix the strabismus. Now most of the time I use both eyes. It still wanders though if I'm tired. I'm still clumsy though & though I now have some depth perception it is not great. Also certain optical illusions will stress my brain & cause me to revert to monocular vision in spite of my best efforts to maintain stereo vision.
Yes, strabismus that is caused by neurological problems are definitely part of autism. Not all form of strabismus are related to autism though. This type definitely will also have other neurological manifestations such as motor dyspraxia or verbal dyspraxia. I have slight to moderate motor dyspraxia as I am slightly clumsy & have poor fine motor coordination. I can not work fast at all without creating issues. For example it has taken my over half an hour to type this short reply , something that a normal person would have done in couple of minutes or even seconds.