Importance: Abnormal binocular experience during infancy or childhood from strabismus and/or anisometropia results in visual acuity deficits (eg, amblyopia) and impaired stereoacuity. These pediatric eye conditions have also been linked to slow reading and fine motor impairment.
Objective: To assess an academic-related fine motor outcome-multiple-choice answer form completion time-in children with amblyopia and strabismus.
Design, setting, and participants: In this cross-sectional study completed between May 2014 and November 2017 at a nonprofit eye research institute, 47 children with amblyopia treated for strabismus, anisometropia, or both, 18 children with nonamblyopic strabismus, and 20 normal controls were enrolled.
Exposures: Children were asked to transfer the correct answers from a standardized reading achievement test booklet to a multiple-choice answer form as quickly as possible without making mistakes or reading the text.
Main outcomes and measures: The time to complete the task was recorded and analyzed between groups.
Results: Of the 85 included children, 40 (47%) were female, the mean (SD) age was 10.09 (0.91) years, and the last mean (SD) grade completed was 3.42 (0.92). Compared with children in the control group (mean [SD] time to completion, 230 [63] seconds), children with amblyopia (mean [SD] time to completion, 297 [97] seconds; difference, 63 seconds; 95% CI, 24-102; P = .001) and children with nonamblyopic strabismus (mean [SD] time to completion, 293 [53] seconds; difference, 68 seconds; 95% CI, 21-115; P = .002) required approximately 28% (95% CI, 20-37) more time to fill out a multiple-choice answer form. Completion time was not associated with etiology, visual acuity, or stereoacuity.
Conclusions and relevance: Multiple-choice answer forms typically accompany standardized testing in schools in the United States. Longer completion time in children with amblyopia or strabismus may affect a child's performance on tests using multiple-choice answer forms and may hinder academic success.