Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Visual Spatial or Poor Visual Perception?

DS7 has a host of visual Issues that I'm trying to make sense of.

First off, he has poor eye tracking and binocular vision. All these are occular motor related and can be helped by physical eye exercises (they have).

What's confounding is his visual perception. He apparently has poor visual sequential memory and visual closure. On the other categories of visual discrimination, he's very nearly at the borderline. All this prompted his therapist to comment that he has the makings of a dyslexic.

But he's not! Reading is well ahead, so is comprehension and math. Spelling is great - he tells me he takes a picture of the word and reads out the spelling, backwards or forwards. Lately, hes even willing to write short stories that are hillarious, but more significantly, show logical sequential follow through. He's able to take a 3-d object, break it down to net form, refold it or rotate to any side. What surprised me yesterday though, was that when he was asked to copy a picture (of circles connected with lines, for fine motor skill practice), he did it exactly in reverse. He couldn't see the difference for awhile too.

My question is, is this a visual perception issue or is he just very visual spatial?

Anyone in similar shoes?

I have a son with poor visual spatial and visual perception - similar to your son. Although my son IS dyslexic, these issues are not aspects of his reading disability. Dyslexia is usually described as a weakness in the phonological system and rapid naming domain. While these visual issues compound my son's reading issues, they are not the "cause" of the issues.

Like your son, mine is quite strong in many "visual spatial" areas. He is a master at Legos, has a strong number sense, and very strong comprehension. However, on tasks that require visual motor - especially penmanship - he is very very weak. Very weak!

Some things to keep an eye on as he gets older - the writing component of math can be problematic. If your son does not write legibly, has difficulty lining up his numbers, multi step math problems can become a disaster. Graph paper and or line paper helps my son. Copying from a book or the black board might be difficult. The VT might help this, but I found that my son did not sustain the the skills he developed through VT and over time he was back to square one.

Does your son have OT to address the visual discrimination issues? If not, I'd look into it. Maps, graphs, busy work sheets can be very difficult for kids with weaknesses in this area. OT can help to develop these skills.

I see what you're saying, mich.

Gosh, I keep nodding when you talk about poor penmanship and super Lego, number sense, etc. That's my son too. For math, he thinks it in his head and writes the answer down for junior math olympiad style questions. But you're spot on- he's said it himself - he dislikes multistep word problems like those for Singapore Math. I've let him skip the longer ones, thinking that the issue is related to developmental age. But as you point out, it could be LD-related.

Is there a difference between VT and OT to address visual discrimination? Aren't these two areas covered by the VT? We are at the moment searching for an effective VT. I have some names but need to schedule the time to do it.

I've also found a bunch of visual discrimination worksheets that are easy for me to supplement at home. Have you used them? Wonder if they work.

Well, it could be both. I have a dd like that - very visual-spatial, but also went through VT for eye tracking issues and OT for SPD (the OT inadvertantly helped the VT tremendously - long story. The OT was combined with listening therapy and took place in an OT gym.) A few years later, I am left wondering whether there is some visual perception issue in her brain - based on what happened in her last IQ test - since her eyes work together pretty well now. (Remind me please, next time we have a post-test conference, to bring a tape recorder so I can remember why I think this...)

I observed all of ds's VT sessions and did the practice every night. In my untrained mind, it seemed very much like OT that focuses primarily on the visual system. I am still not sure if I endorse VT - my son hated it, practice was a nightmare, and the benefits seemed to wear off over time.

My son's LD school recommends forms of cognitive therapy that address these systems in a similar, but different way. We have not participated, and again I am a bit skeptical. But, there are number of believers out there that are much smarter than me! I tend to be a bit conventional when it comes to treatment and try to focus on where will get the biggest bang for our buck. For my guy, reading is the main issue, so I tend to focus more in this area.

We've done OT and VT - but stopped at age 8. I do think this is all related and various disciplines can help - it's hard to decide where to focus efforts and how to measure results and improvement!

Yes - we did some of the worksheets at home. Tangrams are good too. Puzzles, dot to dot etc.

Tks for the info, snowgirl and mich.

So many variations, ach.

I'm apt to think he's a combination of both visual spatial and poor visual perception. DS is undergoing OT for fine motor skills, but that can't happen in the absence of some visual discrimination therapy. This is done once a week at the OT's office. Probably the reason the therapy isn't working out is because they don't give home assignments, but it sounds like a necessary segment of overall therapy.

I hear you on maintenance, Mich. It's gonna be grueling ... Hopefully, this eases with age ...

Blob, I found the book The Gift of Dyslexia, very helpful to explain better what dyslexia is. The man who wrote the book has dyslexia. It is the best book I have found that explains in detail many aspects of dyslexia, like you described your son is doing. Dyslexia isn't just difficuilty reading, reversals or phonological difficuilties. It has many faucets. Like 3-D vision , writing and seeing words or objects backwards,upside down like a computer generated image.
I deal with eye problems and was suscessful by improving diet.
With fish oil tablets, ground flax seed, yougart, probiotic tablets, multi-vitiamin with minearls Eye doctor said with such high IQ there was a narrow margin. He said, no sugar, fructrose, junkfood, or artificial sweetners. For fine motor skills I bought him chopsticks to eat with. It was fun but helped develop fine motor skills, I also bought tracing paper and had him trace cool monster pictires that had alot of detail,which he would spend hours to make them look just right, which also developed fine motor skills. Hope something here helps.

That's really interesting, TMI Grandma. Instantly, I can see the the copying of monsters will work!

On the advise of his osteopath, we've revamped his diet as well. In his case, he had to cut out wheat, egg and milk. The gains were immediate - much better sleep at night (9-10 hours now vs a very restless 6-7 hours), and a much calmer personality.

I definitely need to get a copy of the book to understand what's going on. Think it's by Ron Davis. I'm starting to think that there is no way/no need to change how his brain fundamentally works except where it deals with the physical world. What's necessary is to manage the issue so that he can function normally in tests. Probably, that's what VT/OT is all about.

Blob, I read the book Overcomming Dyslexia, which explains that people who are dyslexic are right brain dominite with ability to be a genius in one or more areas of functioning. Language skill are processed through the left hemisphere of the brain, unless you are dyslexic then language is being processed through the right hemisphere of the brain. People with dyslexia process information utilizing their amazing visual spacial skills to overcome diffucuilty with sequencial information like language and numbers (phonological deficit). They develop unique compensatory skills like visualing the whole word as a picture. Or doing the math in their head utilizing their high visuial spacial abilities. They think in pictures, like a movie they visualize what is being said. They can utilize their brain to rotate a image just like a computer. As you said your son did. I found that if I thought of creative ways to process information through the right hemisphere of the brain to learn information or skills like fine motor skills. I could address the difficuilty, in the way he was learning at a genius level. By utilizing his artistic ability to develop his fine motor skills. Painting, carving, sculpting, cutting out letters and shapes, weaving, he collected rocks. So I bought him a rock tumbler and kit to make and design jewelery. He learned to opperated the backhoe profeciently. To weld. Woodworking with tools. The goal would be to do alot of things to wire up the brain by creating synaptic conections.(It also provide him with high self esteme) In the book Enriching the Brain by Eric Jensen, it states that a enriched enviorment raises IQ. You said you want to improve his academic functioning on tests. It sounds like you have great services to meet your son needs. Don't know if anything I have to share would help for you. It sounded like it might. I am in similar shoes. Sorry didn't give enough info. to make sence of tracing monsters in eariler post. I was excited to hear how you son takes picture of word and reads it back to his self. He is quite amazing child! Wishing you the best!

Tmi grandma, that's a wealth of information.

To be honest, I had regarded all this right brain-ness as a negative. He used to zone out half the time, smiling to himself as he replayed movies or segments of play that he liked. He's much better at tuning all this out recently though, with the extra sleep he's getting, and better eating too.

I'm realizing now as DS' develops that there are different aspects that are showing through. I'm not quite sure how to help him at the moment, and will read the books you recommend. Definitely, this is an area I need to delve deeper.

You must be quite an amazing grandparent, TMI. I'd never have come up with half of what you have!