So I have been following this thread with interest because my DS doesnt fit neatly into any of the LD or VT categories but there's something going on. He definitely has fine motor issues, and perhaps fine motor integration issues which make his handwriting a mess. We had one set of vision tests which identified a tracking issue but not a huge one. He has zero difficulty reading but clearly has something which makes the spacing of letters in words and between words so difficult for him. And someone - Polarbear? - mentioned the eating every meal standing up - wow is that famillar.
We are waiting to set up the next level of vision testing for perceptual stuff and there some fight going on between eye doctors about the skills tests being necessary before the perceptual test and the doctor who did the first set of tests saying its not necessary. So I don't have the report yet which is driving me crazy because it is preventing me from having something to give to his 1st grade teacher about his vision and writing as an amendment to the IEP.
But, the reason why I chimed now is the discussion sent me to my insurance carrier's policies to see what they said - wow - there's quite a fight going on being the AAP the AAO and other alphabets orgs dealing with vision, children etc. so my policy says, we pay for VT for these things, but not those things and expressly highlighted these studies regarding VTs ineffectiveness for dyslexia and other LDs. Most interesting for our situation was- they cite this -
[/quote]Visual Information Processing Evaluation
Limited clinical evidence was found to support the use of visual information processing evaluations for diagnosing learning-related or other types of visual deficits.
Goldstand et al. (2005) compared visual and visual-information processing skills between children with and without mild reading and academic problems and examine the incidence of visual deficits among them. Seventy-one seventh graders classified as proficient (n = 46) and non- proficient (n = 25) readers were compared with respect to scores on an accepted vision screening, on tests of visual-perception, visual-motor integration, and academic performance. Further, academic performance and visual-information processing were compared between children who failed and passed the vision screening. Visual deficits were found in 68% of the participants, and among significantly more boys than girls. Non-proficient readers had significantly poorer academic performance and vision-screening scores than the proficient readers. Participants who passed the visual screening performed significantly better in visual perception than those who failed. According to the investigators, visual function significantly distinguishes between children with and without mild academic problems, as well as on visual- perception scores. The investigators concluded that the high occurrence of visual deficits among participants warrants consideration of vision deficits among schoolchildren with academic performance difficulties. These findings require confirmation in a larger study.[quote]
And then it goes on to say there is no discernible effect and blah blah blah not covered! I get that the n's are small. But what is really interesting here was the fact that the evaluation can clearly identify deficits, so worth doing, but they can't determine outcomes of therapy as conclusively. But it seems to suggest that if reading is an issue the testing is valuable - the mixed response is about what can be done to remediate. Doesn't help us as much since reading is not his issue and it's not just a core/strength issue but I found it interesting and thought I would share!
DeHe
