Normative study of accommodative facility in elementary schoolchildren

Although accommodative facility testing is used widely in the evaluation of accommodation in children, published normative data are not available for this age group. Current values being used are based upon studies of adult populations. In order to establish norms, 542 elementary schoolchildren were screened. Those that passed a specific set of criteria were included in the accommodative facility assessment. We used a new target and instructional set, which took into consideration the problems associated with subjective testing of young children. The results revealed lower mean accommodative facility values for both monocular and binocular accommodative facility than the values obtained previously from adult populations. These new findings can be used as a clinical guide to evaluate accommodative facility in young children.