According to experts measuring how well the child can read from the chart will not provide information whether the child will become nearsighted or not.

A person develops Myopia or nearsightedness when further distances are seen as blurry.

Generally in a person with normal vision, the eyeball grows with the rest of the body and stop at a point that gives clear vision but the eyeball in myopia grows and rather than having spherical shape becomes elongated shaped.

A new study has revealed a method by which it can be predicted whether the child will become nearsighted or not.

Finding refractive error of the child at the age of 6 will predict the chances of nearsightedness in future.

Children generally develop myopia or nearsightedness at the age of 8 to 12.

For the study, researchers have gathered 4,500 ethnically diverse children. The entire participants were aged 6-11 and had normal vision at the start of the study.

During the study the participant’s eyesight was measured regularly and parents were asked about the habits of their children.

Study lead author, Karla Zadnik, dean of the College of Optometry at Ohio State University said they have identified 13 potential risk factors for myopia.

One of the indications is if the parents had myopia then there are high chances for the children to develop myopia.

The study determined that sitting too close to TV, reading books at a close range, staring at laptops, mobile will not have any effect on vision.

The study results indicate that the children having refractive error less than +0.75 diopters in the first grade are likely to develop myopia in future.

Zadnik  said, “As people become aware of a test for their first-grader that would help predict whether their child will need glasses for nearsightedness, I think myopic parents who want to have this information about their kids could lead to rapid adoption of this test.”

The findings are published in JAMA Ophthalmology