Digital Rotator

Most vision therapy offices have some kind of rotator; a big, bulky contraption with a slowly spinning wheel, upon which you can place targets for the patient to track and poke with their finger or a stick. Some rotator devices have holes into which the patient has to insert a peg or golf tee as the wheel goes round and round. It’s a challenging activity that works tracking skills, oculomotor, and gross & fine motor skills, but it’s not easy to send home with your patients for their home practice between office visits. That is, of course, unless you have them doing their home practice on NeuroVisual Trainer (NVT).

You’ll find our Rotator in the Oculomotor category of NVT’s Exercises menu. It’s optimized for use on a touchscreen to best approximate that big piece of analog equipment in your therapy room. Rotator works great on a standard sized iPad, but we also have clinics who put it up on their big Sanet Vision Integrator touchscreen, too. It also works on a regular computer or laptop with a keyboard and mouse, which adds an extra layer of complexity to the proceedings.

As with all of NeuroVisual Trainer’s interactive exercises, Rotator has a suite of customizable parameters on offer:

• The targets can be ordered or unordered.
• Level lets you specify the speed of rotation.
• You can also choose the direction of rotation, or keep your patient on their toes and make it alternate.
• Focus allows you to select a central fixation target. (We love the Fireball!)
• Anti-suppression options include Random, OD on-target, OS on-target, or randomly alternating OD and OS.
• There is also an optional "Finger Follow" mode that requires the patient to maintain physical contact with a moving target on a touch screen.

Example Rotator Configuration
In this particular Rotator configuration, we have the "Fireball" central focus, and randomized anti-supression colours for use with anaglyph glasses. The targets are unordered, so the user can click them in any order.

Rotator can be used to work on a number of visual skills:

• Fixation; the patient has to eliminate all the targets moving in their periphery whilst staying focused on the fixation target in the center.
• Add some cognitive complexity to the proceedings by having the patient eliminate targets in sequence with Ordered Numbers.
• Make the most out of touch-screen displays and exercise those fine-motor skills by configuring Rotator for Finger Follow, which requires the patient to maintain physical contact with a moving target, matching its rotation.
• As with any of NVT’s interactive exercises, add anaglyph glasses to give Rotator some anti-suppression mojo; OD on target, OS on target, or mix things up by randomizing it!

In keeping with NeuroVisual Trainer’s ethos, Rotator is a highly customizable activity that allows you to tailor it to best suit your patients’ needs and abilities. Have fun and spin on!