The LIGHT Center, T-90, College of the Redwoods (476-4290) - April 30, 2001

SEEING THINGS THAT AREN’T THERE?

Just about everyone has been to the eye doctor at least once.  Some of us are lucky enough to not need corrective lenses, while others have worn them most of their lives.  When we talk about corrective lenses, we typically think about our acuity or sharpness of vision.  There are however, a number of visual skills that can affect both our learning and our functioning more generally that are not related at all to acuity. 

Visual perceptual skills or visual processing as it is more often termed refers to the activity carried out at the cortical level rather than at the eye level.  In other words, visual processing is what the brain does with the information send to it by the eye.  Difficulties in visual perception can be as debilitating as uncorrected visual acuity problems.  There are a number of perceptual skills involved, many of which can be tested by psychologists and other learning specialists.  These are skills that are essential for learning to read, draw, do physical activity and generally cope on a day to day basis. Some of the more explainable ones are discussed below.

Visual Discrimination

Visual discrimination is the ability of the brain to differentiate between similar visual forms.  This could be in terms of letters, words, forms or structures.  For example, someone with a visual discrimination problem could show difficulty with recognizing the difference between the abbreviations “tsp.” and “tbsp.” in cookbooks. Or, they may not accurately discriminate between an addition sign and a multiplication sign in math.  Obviously, both can have significant impact on the outcome of whatever the task may be.

Visual Sequencing

This is the ability to perceive visual forms in their intact order.  For example in spelling, a person with this problem might get the order of the letters confused even though all the correct letters are known.  Or, they perceive the word “eat” as “ate”, mixing up the order of the letters when decoding them for the reading task.  Writing the numbers in a phone number in the incorrect order is another common symptom.

Visual Spatial Relations

Visual spatial relations pertain to one’s ability to orient in space.  For example, knowing where in space their body is placed. Someone with poor skills in this area might easily hit their hand with a hammer; not realizing their hand was too close to the nail they were trying to hit.  Or, they fall off a step, not realizing that their foot was at the point of changing level.  People with this difficulty tend to not have good eye-hand coordination for things such as baseball, darts, dancing etc.

Visual Figure Ground

This is a skill essential for the classroom.  Someone with this problem has trouble reading.  They tend to skip words, skip lines, and get distracted as to where they are on the page.  They can miss complete questions on a page, not realizing that they missed them.  Busy worksheets and crowded pages are really problematic for people with this problem.

TAKE A PILL?

No, there is no pill or easy solution to this problem.  Despite the claims of some specialists, there is no convincing evidence that eye exercises, colored lenses or any other gimmick works to eliminate the difficulties associated with visual perceptual dysfunction. However, there are some simple things that we as instructors can do.

·        When providing the student with either board notes, overhead notes, or notes from the computer, be aware of your spacing.  The larger the print the better, and the plainer the font the better.  Try to avoid crowded notes.

·        When giving a test, realize that the ScanTrons can be extremely difficult for students with visual perceptual problems.  With other formats, be sure that you have set up your page in a way that is logical and not visual distracting for the student.

·        Consider enlarging any handouts for students that divulge that they have trouble.  The enlargement increases the spaces between lines and forms etc, and makes it easier to navigate around.

·        For students who have difficulty with lining up the numbers while doing math or other computational skills, encouraging them to use graph paper is helpful.  They can put one character in each box, forcing them to align and organize their information.

·        Many people with visual perceptual problems do much better on verbal tasks than written ones.  Consider changing the format of the task.

Comments?          mailto:trish-blair@eureka.redwoods.edu

Quotation of the Week

People have a natural tendency to flee to the mountains when things get tough. -- Stuart Briscoe