How Inefficient Visual Processing Can Affect a Student's School Performance

 

From The Vision Therapy Center

 

 

 

Published on Feb 21, 2013

 

Dr. Kellye Knueppel of The Vision Therapy Center discusses how vision problems affect each academic subject, including reading, composition, math and handwriting.

 

 

Visual Skills Affect Handwriting Development

http://www.pediastaff.com/blog/fine-motor-skills-the-key-to-a-lifetime-of-educational-success-4474

Fine Motor Skills:  The Key to a Lifetime of Educational Success

by. Megan Eldridge, OTR/L via Pedia Staff




Photo Credit: michy66

People often bring children to me to get help for “handwriting” but they really need much more.
When a child struggles with handwriting, it is usually a symptom of an underlying problem. The first task is to evaluate the child individually to find the cause.

Poor handwriting may be the symptom of a larger problem

There are two major areas that need evaluation when children are struggling with handwriting:

1. Fine-motor skills
2. Visual-motor skills

These two components are vital to the long-term success of children in school and are critical for more than just handwriting.

Start with a 14-point fine-motor skills evaluation

Each one of the 14-different fine motor skills plays a critical role when it comes to learning and handwriting.

For example, if a child presses too hard or too lightly when writing, we know that the arches of their hands are not fully developed.

If a child flexes their wrist when writing, they do not have good wrist stability. Children with this challenge are actually losing 30%-40% of their muscle strength and coordination, which greatly affects their ability to write.

A child’s hand must be well coordinated before it can skillfully manipulate a “tool” such as a pencil. In other words, you can’t put the cart before the horse.

Fine-motor skills lay the foundation for an efficient pencil grip and ultimately, legible handwriting.
Linda Lamme, a Professor at the University of Florida’s College of Education, outlined six specific prerequisites for handwriting. The top two listed are small muscle development and eye-hand coordination.

Visual-motor skills are equally as important when it comes to handwriting and learning
Vision is more than 20/20 eyesight. “Sight” refers to a person’s ability to see clearly at near and far distances.

“Vision” is the ability to interpret and understand information that comes through the eyes.

According to Mary McMains, O.D., M.Ed., F.C.O.V.D., “The visual system is a significant part of how we process information and a key factor in how we learn”.

“Eighty percent of what you perceive, comprehend and remember depends on the efficiency of the visual system.”

Screening for visual tracking and convergence insufficiencies of the eyes (using both eyes to move, align, fixate and focus as a team) are two simple ways you can identify red flags.

Once identified, significant fine-motor skill problems can be further assessed with an in-depth evaluation by a specialist.

Fine-motor and visual-motor skills are vital when it comes to academic success
If these skills are not developed early it is easy to see how difficult and energy consuming it is for a child to perform well in a classroom setting.

Children who have motor skill challenges have to put forth an enormous amount of energy to accomplish the same tasks that take other children a fraction of the concentration and effort.

The great news is that there is help for children who are struggling.

The first step is to get an evaluation by an occupational therapist that specializes specifically in fine-motor skill development related to handwriting. The best option is to find an expert that is knowledgeable in both fine-motor and visual-motor skill development in children.

They can recommend a treatment plan to help develop the necessary skills to build a child’s confidence and help them achieve a lifetime of academic success.

Featured Author: Megan Eldridge

Megan is a licensed Occupational Therapist (OTR/L), has a Masters Degree in Occupational Therapy (MOT) with a pediatric specialty and is a specialist in fine motor skill development for children 4 – 12, focusing on improving handwriting as the foundation for educational success.
Megan has been a featured speaker on childhood fine motor development and handwriting improvement for educational groups, State conferences as well as teaching other Occupational Therapists her methods.

To find out more about handwriting development, visit my blog at http://www.meganeldridge.com

Vital Connections Between Vision and Learning

http://info.thevisiontherapycenter.com/download-your-free-vision-and-learning-guide/?utm_campaign=Vision-and-Learning-Guide-Download&utm_source=TVTC%20Blog

Vision Therapy Center, Inc.


 

Teacher/Parent Vision and Learning Guide

www.thevisiontherapycenter.com

The information in this guide was created for teachers and parents. It provides background information on the vital connections between vision and learning.

You’ll find the following information:

• Vision and Learning Overview

• What are some of the vision skills that affect learning?

• Impact on Subjects

• What does the work of someone with vision problems look like?

• Stress Points

• Take the Vision Quiz

• Vision Therapy

• Studies

• Success Stories

• Modifications for the Classroom

• The Vision Therapy Center Contact

Vision and Learning Overview

Good vision requires your eyesight, visual pathways, and brain to all work together. When they don’t, even a person with 20/20 eyesight can experience difficulty reading, writing and processing information, as 80% of all information comes to a child through their vision.

Most people think that if a person’s visual acuity is 20/20 their vision is ‘normal’ or ‘perfect’. That’s not the case.

Visual acuity is a measure of the clarity of a person’s vision and is tested by having a patient read a line of letters on an eye chart. This test does not require the same amount and types of eye movements that reading does, so it cannot be used to determine whether a child has the visual skills necessary to read.

While clear vision is important, it is only one of many visual skills required to be able to read and learn.

·         75-90% of classroom learning comes through the visual system.

·         80% of children who are reading disabled, including dyslexics, have vision problems that can be solved.

·         25% of ALL children have a vision problem significant enough to affect their performance in school.

·         95% of first grade nonreaders had significant vision problems. They had nearly 2.5 times more visual problems than first grade high achievers.

·         In one study, 70% of juvenile delinquents had a vision problem.

·         In one California funded study, recidivism (repeat offenders) reduced from 45% to 16% when wards received on-site optometric vision therapy.

·         When a group of illiterate adults were vision screened, there was a 74% failure rate.

·         School vision screenings, such as a Snellen eyechart, detect only 20-30% of vision problems in schools.

·         Only 13 percent of mothers with children younger than 2 years of age have taken their baby for a functional well-care eye exam. Yet 1 out 10 children are at risk for having an undiagnosed vision problem.

Source: Visionandlearning.orgwww.thevisiontherapycenter.com

What are some of the skills that affect learning?

Convergence

When reading, the eyes should aim inward at the same spot in order to fixate on print. If the eyes aim at a spot in front of or behind the print, extra energy and effort is required to maintain fixation and double or overlapping vision may occur. An example is shown to the left.

Directionality

Directionality is important in understanding how similar shapes can have different meanings when they are in different orientations. To the left is an example of some letters that are commonly reversed by children with poor directionality. The letters are the exact same shape, but are called a different name depending on their orientation. This can be a difficult concept because if another object, such as a chair, is turned on its side or upside-down it is still called a chair.

Form Perception

Below is an example of an item from a visual perceptual skills test. In this particular test the child is asked to identify which form among the choices at the bottom matches the form on top. Other visual perceptual skills tests assess the child’s ability to identify a form from memory, identify which form is oriented in a different direction, identify a form that has a different size or orientation, identify a sequence of forms from memory, identify a figure hidden in ground and identify an incomplete form as if it were complete.

b d p q

Span of Recognition

Children who can read at accelerated speeds often have a good span of recognition, allowing them to recognize and process several words at one time. Children lacking this skill may only be able to see one word or letter at a time. In order to see what this would be like, try reading a sentence or paragraph while looking through a straw.

Visualization

Visualization is the ability to create mental images. Children who have vision problems may also have difficulty with visualization. This skill is important for success in many school subjects including spelling and math.

Tracking (Pursuits and Saccades)

Commonly referred to as ‘tracking’, maintaining fixation on a moving target (pursuits) or accurately switching fixation between two targets (saccades) are two types of eye movements that are essential for reading and learning.

An example of this is when your eyes reach the end of a line of print and have to accurately move from the end of that line to the beginning of the next line of print. Difficulty with these eye movements can cause a child to skip words or lose their place easily when reading.

Impact on Subjects

Considering 80% of the information you process comes through your visual system, it’s not surprising that a vision problem can affect a number of different subjects. Here’s a brief overview of how vision problems can manifest in various areas.

Reading

Vision problems affect reading in two significant ways:

·         When a student is learning to read, a serious vision problem could reduce their ability to know what they are looking at and impact their ability to remember numbers and letters.

·         When a student is reading to learn and has blurry or double vision, their ability to read for long periods of time and comprehend what they are reading can be severely reduced.

The ability to read and the ability to comprehend what is being read are two different things. Comprehending what is read is a visual process, and can be affected when the visual system is not working correctly. If a student sees words on the page as blurry or double, he or she has to use extra effort to keep the words single and clear and this can negatively impact comprehension.

Students with vision problems spend the majority of their time decoding words. Instead of reading fluidly and visualizing the words and the message as a whole, they focus on each specific word. This is a struggle, making it difficult to quickly process sections of text.

As a result, students will track text with their fingers. They’ll read a slower pace and will have fluency issues. Their reading will be marred by repetitions, insertions, omissions and substitutions.

These reading problems are all too often misconstrued as laziness on the part of the student. They are not. They are simply symptomatic of a vision problem. When corrected, it’s common for students to enjoy reading and no longer avoid it.

Math

If a student has difficulty seeing things as clear and single, they may have trouble seeing decimals and/or signs. An important skill in math is to organize what is being written and the student may have trouble lining things up and keeping their place if their visual skills are poor.

Laterality and directionality are also important concepts in math. If a student sees the orientation of numbers incorrectly, they will have difficulty completing the problem.

Students who lack visualization skills can often be found counting on their fingers or verbalizing sequences. Given enough time, they can generally compute an answer, but they tend to do poorly on timed tests. Awareness of numbers and what they mean as well as being able to visualize numbers and quantities, are critical to success in math and can be impacted if a child has a vision problem.

It should be noted that a child with vision problems may do well in math but be a poor reader, primarily because math doesn’t require as many precise eye movements as reading.

Spelling

Visual recall, the ability to create a visual image based on past visual experience without currently having that experience, is a visualization skill that is critical for spelling. In spelling, it is the ability to create a mental image of a word without being able to look at the word.

Writing

Writing involves both handwriting and composition skills. It is necessary for vision to lead the hand for handwriting and this can be very difficult if the student cannot see well. In fact, often you can see in the handwriting where the student stopped looking or became fatigued. Difficulty writing straight on a page is often a result of poor peripheral awareness.

There are several vision-related skills that are critical to good handwriting that may be underdeveloped in a student with vision problems. Visualization is also important in handwriting because the student needs to remember what different words look like in order to reproduce them on the page. Spatial concepts are important in handwriting to know and plan how words will go together. Good laterality and directionality are important to differentiate similarly-shaped letters in different orientations (e.g. b, d, p, q).

Visualization is also critical for writing composition because the student needs to be able to organize and re-organize the composition in his or her head.

What does the work of someone with vision problems look like?

Take a look at some of the work samples of students with vision problems:

Unequal sized print

Words moving or letters running together

Words take off and leave the page

Double print

Reversed letters

Words squished together

Words appear as splotches or streaks

Words are shaky

Stress Points

These are areas that can cause stress for students with vision problems:

• Small print

• Sustained, near point work

• Full pages of print, with blocks of text close together

• Copying from chalkboard or SMART Board to paper on desk

• Fine-motor skills

• Flickering fluorescent bulbs

• Standardized test sheets

• Random lists of spelling words

• Timed tests

• Crossword puzzles

• Reading aloud to a group without being given a warning

• Being asked to instantly identify right and left directions

Visual Processing Affects On Reading, Part 2: Symptoms of Poor Eye Tracking Skills

The last post referred to visual processing deficits, particularly poor eye tracking skills, which impact a child's ability to read and/or learn how to read. My colleagues and I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with Dr. Kristy M. Remick, a developmental optometrist, and her vision therapist, Vicki Bedes, in regards to vision therapy. They published a book, Eyes on Track: A Missing Link to Successful Learning which gives practical visual development activities that can be done by parents and teachers to help students with poor visual processing skills. While working with students in the clinic setting, many of the activities suggested in Eyes on Track were used successfully in conjunction with occupational therapy with a sensory integration focus.  Much of the following information is summarized from Dr. Remick and Mrs. Bedes’ book.

 Students give us clues on a daily basis which display their difficulty processing visual information on a page.  They may say:

            “I lose my place when I read.”

            “I have to blink when I read.”

            “The words and letters are blurry.”

            “I have to use my finer or I lose my place.”

            “I reread lines sometimes.”

            “My eyes get tired when I read.”

            “I can’t remember what I’m reading.”

 Teachers should be looking for the following performance based symptoms of poor eye tracking skills that students display in the classroom:

             Avoids near-point work

            Poor posture while reading

            Head tilting when reading or writing

            Holds book too close to eyes

            Homework requiring reading takes a long time

            Poor attention during work time

            Loses place when reading

            Uses a marker or finger to keep place

            Moves head when reading

            Omits, re-reads words/letters

            Re-reads lines

            Repeats letters within words

            Reads big words, but misreads/misses smaller words (and, but, if, the)

            Difficulty copying form chalkboard/loses place

            Avoids reading out loud

Enjoys being read to/avoids self-reading

Poor reading comprehension

            Comprehension declines as reading continues

            Misaligns numbers in math

            Does not look directly into speaker’s eyes

            Easily distracted


Students can have both eye tracking difficulties and poor vision perception.  The following performance symptoms reflect a vision perception deficit which impacts performance in other areas.  Teachers should look for the following signs of poor vision perception:

            Letter reversals in reading or writing (b,d,q,p)

            Number reversals

            Repeatedly confuses right/left direction

            Word reversals (saw/was, on/no)

            Grips pencil too tightly/poor grip (thumbs crossed over fingers)

            Poor handwriting

            Poor spacing when writing

            Uses other hand as “spacer” to control spacing when writing

            Writes uphill or downhill

            Orients drawings/writing poorly on page

            Poor shape recognition/difficulty copying shapes

            Confuses similar words

            Failure to recognize same word in next sentence

            Poor visualization/spells words based on sounds only

            Poor comprehension/unable to describe what has been read

            May comprehend better when someone reads to them

            Difficulty with sports/poor motor skills

            Frustration with school work


Students who display similar symptoms in the classroom are probably suffering from vision deficits and should be evaluated by a Developmental Optometrist and receive intervention.  The activities found in  Eyes on Track: A Missing Link to Successful Learning can be beneficial to those families who don’t have the financial means to access Vision Therapy and/or Occupational Therapy with a Sensory Integration focus. 

Parents Active for Vision Education (P.A.V.E.) have an excellent website to inform and guide parents (and teachers) on the relationship between vision and achievement.   

http://pavevision.org/

Visual Processing Effects on Reading Part 1

One of the most complex activities that the brain performs is reading, and one of the most important parts of reading is the proper movement of the eyes across the page of print to be able to read that print.  Eye movements are the fastest and most frequent movements made by the human body.  Ocular motor control refers to the control and coordination of eye muscles/movements needed to read print on a page.  Ocular motor dysfunction is one of the main causes of poor reading.

Eye movements are controlled by three pairs of muscles that control three different types of eye movements: moving side to side (left to right when reading), moving up and down (moving down to the next line of text, or moving from your notes to the board), and rotating to keep the visual image upright.

When students are given vision screenings for school, they are usually ONLY tested for visual acuity at a distance of 20 feet and for color blindness.  Most reading is done within an arm's length, so the standard eye chart test does not screen for NEAR vision skills, the skills that are in constant demand of students when performing school tasks. Furthermore, the Snellen Eye Chart that is still used today in screenings was developed way back in 1862 to be used during the Civil War!  Needless to say, most standard school vision screenings have limitations in identifying visual problems that may interfere with a student's school performance.

Due to invention of visually passive items like video games, computer screens, and cell phones, near vision problems are becoming an epidemic in school age children.  The National Eye Institute found a 66% increase in in nearsightedness (myopia) from the early 1970's.  Children are spending less and less time outside where vision is stimulated by focusing on objects further away.

Numerous studies have shown that good eye tracking and attentional skills are directly related to reading readiness.  It has been observed that children younger than 7 years old often have inadequate eye movements for reading readiness.  Most 5 year olds have difficulty performing accurate eye movements used in moving from one word to the next of printed text.  So, why are asking our children to read in kindergarten?  The United States has the highest incidence of learning disabled children while Europe demonstrates a much lower incidence of learning disabilities in children.  Research has shown most European nations don't start students reading until 7 years of age.  There is something to be said about outdoor play and allowing young children to develop in an age appropriate manner.

Coming Next:  Part 2:  Symptoms of Poor Eye Tracking Skills