# An investigation into the correlation between visual performance in simulated complex environments and academic attainment among primary school students

## TL;DR

This study explores how primary school students' performance in complex visual tasks relates to their academic success, particularly in Chinese language scores.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel vision screening method using binocular rivalry tasks to assess visual adaptability in complex environments.

## Key findings

- Pass rates for visual tests ranged from 53.5% to 60.5% among students.
- First-grade students who failed the visual test had significantly lower standardized Chinese scores than those who passed.

## Abstract

Traditional vision screenings in schools are limited to simple visual tasks, yet students in their daily learning face more complex visual environments. Binocular rivalry tasks can partially simulate the visual challenges of real visual environments and activate advanced visual processing mechanisms that simple visual tasks cannot. Therefore, by superimposing binocular rivalry-state tasks onto simple visual tasks, we have developed an innovative vision screening program to rapidly and extensively assess students’ visual performance in complex environments. This is a cross-sectional study in which we investigated the performance of 1126 grade 1–6 students from a primary school in Wuxi, China, in rivalry-state stereoscopic vision tasks. The correlation between the screening results of 1044 students and their academic achievements was also statistically analyzed. The study results revealed pass rates of 53.5–60.5% across various visual tests. Specifically, for first-grade students, there was a statistically significant difference in standardized Chinese scores between the group that failed and the group that passed the rivalry-state stereoscopic vision test (− 0.49 ± 3.42 vs. 0.22 ± 0.58, t =  − 2.081, P = 0.04). This result underscores the importance of focusing on the visual adaptability of first graders in complex environments.

Trail registration: Ethics Committee of Affiliated Children’s Hospital of Jiangnan University-Certificate number: WXCH2022-04-027