Aims To determine the influence of single-vision lenses (SVLs) and progressive addition lenses (PALs) on the near vision posture of myopic children based on their near phoria.

Methods Sixty-two myopic children were assigned to wear SVLs followed by PALs. Eighteen children were esophoric (greater than +1), 18 were orthophoric (−1 to 1) and 26 were exophoric (less than −1) at near. Reading distance, head tilt and ocular gaze angles were measured using an electromagnetic system after adaptation to each lens type.

Results The lens type did not influence reading distance or head tilt angle (p>0.05 for both), but ocular gaze angle decreased significantly with the PALs (F=9.25, p=0.004). With the PALs, exophoric children exhibited significantly increased head tilt angle (p=0.003) and reduced ocular gaze angle (p=0.004) compared with esophoric children. Near non-exophoric children exhibited similar eye and head postures when wearing SVLs and PALs, whereas exophoric children exhibited reduced ocular gaze angle (t=−3.18, p=0.04) with PALs compared with SVLs. Using PALs for reading, the mean addition power employed by esophoric children was significantly greater than exophoric children (p=0.04).

Conclusions The lens type and the near phoria state affected near vision posture. During reading, myopic esophoric children used a lower portion of their PALs compared with exophoric children, resulting in greater addition power. These results may partially explain why myopic children with near esophoria exhibited superior treatment effects in myopia control trials using PALs.