From the age of 6, children with strabismus are less willingly invited to birthday parties than their healthy peers, according to a study by Swiss scientists, reports the BBC.
Researchers showed almost a hundred children, aged 3 to 12, pictures of twins, one with a visual impairment and the other without. They were asked which of them would she invite to her birthday.
Older children much more often chose a twin without a defect. One in twenty study participants had strabismus.
Strabismus is an eye defect manifested by weakening of the eye muscles, which causes a change in the viewing angle of one eye relative to the other. The effect of strabismus is stereoscopic vision disturbance.
Because vision focuses differently, the brain does not learn to use both eyes to look at one object. If one eye is dominant, the brain can suppress the image obtained from the weaker eye.
Strabismus usually develops in the first three years of life, but may not appear until later.
Previous studies have shown that people with strabismus are more prone to prejudice, but the latter study has determined the age at which children become aware of the differences. (PAP)