What's up with Irlen lenses?

[Batboy]

Hi gang,

I’ve been wondering for a while whether anyone here has experience with Irlen lenses. For anyone who’s not heard of them, they’re tinted lenses which are said to help people with various autistic spectrum related problems, which they (somewhat arbitrarily, says my inner cynic) call ‘Scotopic Sensitivity’. Here’s a link to the Irlen Institute’s website:

http://irlen.com/index.php?s=index

Can anyone volunteer the straight dope on these things?

I’ll try and be brief in describing my situation:

Like every third person who uses the internet these days, I’m diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. As I’ve said before on this board, I get by quite well with whatever social impairment I might have, but there are significant sensory elements to it too. I have very poor spacial awareness, and don’t feel as natural in my spacial orientation as I imagine the majority of other people to. Moving (not just walking) from A to B can seem to overload my senses somehow. Needless to say, I don’t drive, but I wish I could.

I’ve always found reading fatiguing (although not to the point that it stops me). Reading music is worse (I’m a psychology student by day, musician by night). Certain frequencies of light have bugged me since I was a kid (ie. too young to know that they were supposed to, so I’m reasonably sure this isn’t a Munchausen’s thing. Believe me, you only have to say ‘Asperger’s’ on the internet to make me :rolleyes:) to the point where I actually began to feel less than 100% safe at a train station a while back.

Anyway, I guess I can go into symptoms a bit more later if anyone would like. Suffice it to say that a lot of what’s around me day to day seems to overload me somehow in a way that it doesn’t overload others. I don’t feel that it’s a top-down phenomenon, meaning that I don’t think it’s ‘just in my head’, or some kind of anxiety related thing, but then I wouldn’t, would I?

Ahoy there, neurologists! I was born a couple of months early, with some ‘birth trauma’, squishing the right hand side of my head, hence my rabbiting on about prefrontal cortices in an earlier thread. A couple of doctors have thought this a possible explanation for the symptoms that led me to be diagnosed with Asperger’s. I’m less interested in the Asperger’s than I am in the symptoms really.

Eye-wise, I don’t actually see out of both at the same time. My left eye is dominant. I had squint correction surgery on the right one when I was a kid. I’ve always put that down to the ‘birth trauma’ thing. I’m VERY left eared too.

ANYWAY! I’ve read about these lenses over the years, and a few of the celebrity Aspergians (not Aspergian celebrities!) wear them, but I’ve never read anything that really reaaaaally convinced me that I wouldn’t be better off investing in some snake oil eyedrops. I guess my skeptometer fires up because the only people who seem to be able to tell me anything about these things are the same people who wouldn’t mind selling me some.

I hope that doesn’t offend anyone. I’m well aware that the people for whom these lenses work (and I wouldn’t mind being one of them) are wearing them because they DO work, but the only real-live wearer I’ve ever asked told me, “I know full well they’re a placebo, but they’re a placebo that works.”

I’d love to be able to drive. This girl says that she couldn’t without her glasses, but she can now. I’d also love to be less ‘in my head’. Less autistic, basically. The testimonials on the site I linked to suggest that it can be had, for a price, so why isn’t it all over the medical literature? Apparently when this girl took her script to be filled, she was told, ‘You know there’s no medical basis for this, right?’ :smack:

On a superficial level I don’t want to look like a flipping idiot, but wouldn’t it be amazing if they worked?

Anyone have the straight dope?

[Batboy]

I’d just like to add:

Again, I’m sorry if I seem over critical here. My mind’s more open to the idea than that post made it sound, and I really do hope someone here has some experience. Maybe my social skills aren’t what I claimed them to be!

Also, as I suppose it’s pretty relevant, I’ve filled in the questionnaires previously, and I tick plenty of boxes. Can anyone say ‘silver bullet’? Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone with any input!

[CalMeacham]

I’ve never heard of this before, and my feelings are mixed. In particular, I suspect the explanation they’re giving isn’t quite correct, although it seems likely that there is something real going on. Please bear in mind that I’ve been reading about this for five minutes, so take MY comments with some salt.

The Wikipedia page on “scotopic sensitivity” notes that

Its existence is not recognized by some major medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the American Optometric Association. However, it has been studied in the former Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge, UK.

Irlen syndrome

Nevertheless:

The condition was jointly described by two people working individually, unaware of the work of the other person. In the early 1980s New Zealand teacher Olive Meares described the visual distortions some individuals reported when reading from white paper, while American therapist Helen Irlen wrote a paper about the use of coloured overlays aiding the reading abilities of some people.

I note that in the article, they stress that the beneficial results seem to come from using light colored overlays. This, and the fact that the people supporting this idea (at sites like the one you cite above) use color displays on the computer screen to illustrate their ideas, seems fundamentally at odds with the claim that

Scotopic sensitivity syndrome is based on the theory that some individuals have hypersensitive photoreceptors, visual pathways, and/or brain systems that react inappropriately to physical energy (wavelengths).

(quoted from the Wiki article)

“Light” overlays, as I stated recently in another thread, are generally broad-wavelength, and won’t “blovk” any wavelengths. Furthermore, the colors on LED and LCD screens don’t represent all the spectrum of natural “white” light, and so anything you do to the colors on your computer screen won’t spectrally block certain colors, either. I have a suspicion that no one has really tested this idea of wavelength-based sensitivity, or even verified that “scotopic sensitivity” has anything to do with scotopic vision (but I can’t really say, since I haven’t read much about it). As the end of the Wiki article states:

This “theory” is little more than a vague re-statement of possible mechanisms that might account for the observed facts. --Rhonda Stone, Author, The Light Barrier, St. Martin’s Press, 2002

I suspect that there IS something to this, but not by the mechanism they’re claiming. If there is somethuing to it, it’s likely to be based on perceptions of other color cues, like contrast, as this quote (from an Irlen site, interestingly) suggests:

In the Irlen Lens System, colored transparencies are placed over printed text with the result that these problems may be reduced or eliminated. A colored overlay, such as a light blue transparency placed over the text, will reduce the contrast between black and white as well as reduce the dominance of the white background. The optimal color of the transparency required depends upon each person’s unique visual-perceptual system.

(emphasis mine)

http://www.autism.com/families/therapy/irlen.htm

[astro]

I think you need to move ‘Asperger’s’ off the table and just focus on whether your visual processing is enhanced by a filter. So much information is taken in by the eyes by the brain it’s not beyond the realm of consideration that improving resolution and contrast, and decreasing eyestrain via light filters could improve overall cognitive function.

Beyond this, to the extent that people are caught in self fulfilling anxiety loops re their sincerely believed disabilities, anything thing that gives them greater confidence and ease in dealing with stressors could also improve cognitive function. If you *believe in *it it’ll probably work.

[Wendell_Wagner]

Batboy writes:

> Like every third person who uses the internet these days, I’m diagnosed with
> Asperger’s Syndrome.

Do you mean that you’ve been diagnosed by a doctor who specializes in this as having Asperger’s Syndrome (which isn’t actually very common)? Or do you mean that you’ve diagnosed yourself with it or been diagnosed by somebody without qualifications to diagnose it (which is pretty common)? If the second case is true, the absolute first thing you should do is go to a qualified doctor and get yourself diagnosed.

[Batboy]

@astro

I think you need to move ‘Asperger’s’ off the table and just focus on whether your visual processing is enhanced by a filter.

Yup, I completely agree, and that’s exactly what I hope I’m doing. I don’t blow my nose to cure my cold, I blow my nose to relieve a symptom. It’s just that I happen to be in this ‘Asperger’s’ audience at which these lenses seem to be aimed. As I said, I’m more interested in the individual symptoms than the ‘syndrome’. Put it this way, I’m confident that there are differences in my sensory processing which would make most people go, ‘Eh, what’s going on?’ if they woke up with them one morning.

It’s just that my only chance to see whether a filter might enhance my visual processing is to go off to see the chap that sells them, and probably not spend any real time being properly scientific about it. Of course, if it’s the difference between light and day I won’t need to be!

@astro

Beyond this, to the extent that people are caught in self fulfilling anxiety loops re their sincerely believed disabilities, anything thing that gives them greater confidence and ease in dealing with stressors could also improve cognitive function. If you believe in it it’ll probably work.

Absolutely, you only have to look at how stressed most people get when their ears are blocked to appreciate how impedence of any sense can influence mood and cognitive function.

I know you probably didn’t mean to imply that I was, but as far as possible I hope everyone’s able to take my word for the ‘fact’ that I’m pretty good about avoiding ‘self fulfilling anxiety loops’ when it comes to this ‘Asperger’s’ malarky. It’s just a set of symptoms, some of which may be curable with magic goggles…

[Sunspace]

@astro

I think you need to move ‘Asperger’s’ off the table and just focus on whether your visual processing is enhanced by a filter. So much information is taken in by the eyes by the brain it’s not beyond the realm of consideration that improving resolution and contrast, and decreasing eyestrain via light filters could improve overall cognitive function.

When I was a kid, I had a major operation on my right eye which required me to be blindfolded from seeing for a week, then wear shades for the next three weeks. During the three weeks, I had special low-contrast reading material. I remember that it was dark-green text on light-green paper. maybe this is another way of doing the same kind of thing?

Edit: and this was in grade 6, so it was spring 1973.

[Batboy]

@Wendell_Wagner

Batboy writes:

> Like every third person who uses the internet these days, I’m diagnosed with
> Asperger’s Syndrome.

Do you mean that you’ve been diagnosed by a doctor who specializes in this as having Asperger’s Syndrome (which isn’t actually very common)? Or do you mean that you’ve diagnosed yourself with it or been diagnosed by somebody without qualifications to diagnose it (which is pretty common)? If the second case is true, the absolute first thing you should do is go to a qualified doctor and get yourself diagnosed.

Yup, I was diagnosed by a specialist here in the UK. I’m not one of ‘those people’! I saw psychologists and the like a lot while I was growing up, many of whom apparently said, ‘It’s almost as though he’s autistic.’ but must have been somewhat indifferent to, or maybe even unaware of Aspergers. It was only when a friend’s mother (an ed. psych.) read a Tony Attwood book and thought of me that I went to get assessed.

I’ve been seeing another top banana in the AS field recently, who said that I might be able to see Dr Baron Cohen in Cambridge, but that didn’t materialise. Shame really, cos then I’d feel like I really knew what was going on.

But yup, I’m as genuine an Aspergian as you can be, not a cyberaspie (I just made that up), which was what I was trying to say in the first place!

[Batboy]

Missed the edit window. I realised I could qualify that with some dates! I was diagnosed when I was 19, I’m 25 now. I think the first time anyone ever suggested to me that I might have Asperger’s was my 18th birthday, but I know that folks worried about Autism when I was a baby (because I gaze avoided and walked late etc.), when I was a toddler (because I had behavioural problems and headbanged etc.) and then when I was a bit older, because I would go into little trances, and I developed tics and stims. (I’ve had EEGs and stuff, all clear.)

[Wendell_Wagner]

Batboy writes:

> I’ve been seeing another top banana in the AS field recently, who said that I
> might be able to see Dr Baron Cohen in Cambridge, but that didn’t materialise.

Maybe you can just rent the movie Borat. That would be almost like seeing Dr. Baron Cohen.

[Batboy]

They’re cousins! The (very) German neuropsychiatrist I last saw thought that was hilarious. “Would you like to see Ali G’s cousin?” etc.