VISUAL PROCESSING

An individual can have clear sight but may have trouble understanding and explaining what they have seen.
Our brain needs to process the information; which is how we are able to see besides having a good pair of eyes.

Difficulties with visual processing affect how visual information is interpreted, or processed by the brain.
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO GET BASIC UNDERSTANDING WILL BE HERE AT UNDERSTOOD.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK​

Eight Types of Visual Processing Issues

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1. VISUAL DISCRIMINATION

  • Visual Discrimination issues: Kids with this type have difficulty seeing the difference between two similar letters, shapes or objects. May find it difficult to match similar visual representations as well. May confuse with reversals too. May have difficulty with facial recognition and even see differences with locations.



​2. VISUAL FIGURE-GROUND DISCRIMINATION

  • Visual figure-ground discrimination issues: Kids with this type may not be able to pull out a shape or character from its background. Foreground may look like blended to the background as one flat plain, with depth perception issues can also give rise to these troubles. Sometimes an individual may seem to have trouble making the room neat and tidy, or finding their lost keys even though it is right in front of them.



​3. VISUAL SEQUENCING ISSUES

They can have difficulty telling the order of symbols, words or images. This can be confused as it is quite similar to sequencial concepts. So the task is to teach concept first, before you observe on the referencing of items. Categorization needs to be taught as well. With these pre-requisites you can decipher whether what is affecting the way the individual is interpretating the information. 



4. VISUAL-MOTOR PROCESSING ISSUES

They can have difficulty using feedback from the eyes to coordinate the movement of other parts of the body.  Now this can affect all sports, all manipulation of fine-motor activities. It can be obviously noticeble if the individual has high fine-motor skills, but are not fast or efficient enough to speed carry the task out. Speed tests can be implemented. Looking at an item from far, and copying is also one of the challenges. Because the eyes need to look up and translate the information on the paper which moves downwards. This translation can even be spotted to work together with visual retention. So children can have both occuring at the same time, resulting in a math answer, written on the left and copying the answer into the box on the right; both answers may end up differently. The information gets lost once the eye tracking is having difficulties coping other information towards the box on the right. In other words, avoiding banging into things, catching a falling ball, can have trouble with executing the hand action even if the person sees it. 
DO NOTE: The website includes pre-requisite skills for VMI in order for it to work more efficiently if we push those foundations closer.



​5. Long- or short-term visual memory issues

Difficulty recalling what they have seen. Visual short term memory (VSTM) is a memory system that stores visual information for a few seconds so that it can be used in the service of ongoing cognitive tasks. The challenge is knowing whether the child understands what they have seen, versus remembering what they have seen. It sometimes can be misunderstood as forgetting what they have learnt, or not paying attention. This is a very tricky hidden difficulty indeed. Implementation of coping strategies, like writing notes or reminders can help them recall the information as they already understood it.


6. Visual-spatial issues

Individuals can have difficulty telling where objects are in space. That includes how far things are from them and from each other. It also includes objects, environments like walking down the stairs and characters described on paper or in a spoken narrative. Individuals may also have a tough time reading maps and judging time.​ Visual spatial and many other visual difficulties can affect math learning as well, sometimes the shapes cannot be differentiated 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional. The space management when it comes to writing calculations can also pose problems, as the individual may not know how to plan how much space is needed. Coping strategies for routines like start from left and working downwards and separating the other half for the next column can be implemented. The best plans work well to help the individual learn how to plan when it comes to writing, packing and drawing. 



​7. Visual closure issues

Individuals with these issues have difficulty identifying an object when only parts are visible.