Abstract: To attract and maintain the gaze of a patient's eyes (particularly those of a child) during an ophthalmalic examination, a small animatable fixation target, such as a toy animal having movable body parts, is mounted on one end of a support, and the other end of the support is held in the mouth of the physician who is conducting the examination. The support includes means for animating the target in reaction to pressure of the teeth on the orally held support, so that the physician can control movement of the target for fixing the patient's gaze and for stimulating accommodation of the patient's eyes while freeing the physician's hands for holding other instruments needed during the examination.