Visual Processing Difficulties

In familiar environments, do you bump into stationary objects?

Despite your intelligence, do you struggle to learn or write?

Visual processing difficulties are an often neglected area of testing. Visual processing skills develop over time until listening, moving, writing, and reading become instinctive and unconscious enabling you to work at your level of intelligence.

What are Visual Processing Skills?

Learn about visual processing skills in the Moore Auditory-Visual Observation Activity Booklet, What to Observe & How to Observe.

Need Help?

Cheri Moore helps children and adults improve their ability to respond and maintain progress after auditory integration training using medically-based testing to guide intervention.

The Moore Auditory-Visual Questionnaire Report is a powerful advocacy tool when combined with your visual observation worksheet reports. Your reports share specific behaviors and their intensity within these categories: sound intolerance, auditory processing concerns, hearing loss, and visual processing concerns.

When What You See Fails to Synch-Up With What You Hear

My experiences as a certified teacher homeschooling a struggling reader caused me to question my knowledge and abilities as a teacher.  Modifying curriculum and teaching through hands-on activities was not working. I taught orally and then retaught visually and then taught some more.  By the end of my daughter’s year of second grade, my heart started to break. My child saw friends and peers reading and writing with ease.  She cried on the outside while I cried on the inside. Why was I unable to teach my own child?  What did I not know?    

I found answers and started asking the right questions. Imagine my disbelief when I learned my daughter saw letters turning upside down and moving, preventing her from reading with ease.  Wow, I had a little genius!

After one year of vision therapy, my daughter became more confident, almost reading on grade level.  Two years later, she enjoyed learning and reading.

 

Speech Development Depends on What is Seen and Heard

A toddler picks up and drops an object over and over.  Do you assume the baby is trying to get you to pick it up? Actually, the toddler is developing depth perception, a visual processing skill. Listening to the object hit the floor integrates what is seen with what is heard, an auditory processing skill.

  • Eye-Hand Cordination occurs when the baby reaches and grasp object.
  • Depth perception occurs when the baby is unable to reach the object.
  • Sound perception occurs when the object hits the floor.

Have you ever noticed that a baby stares at your mouth and awondered, “Why?”  There are several reasons. Babies see most clearly while held when looking at a mother’s face.  

Secondly, babies learn speech by watching mouth, cheek, and tongue movements. They enjoy watching anything that moves.

What is seen and heard teaches an infant how to talk.

Holding and talking with your baby is far more valuable for language development, a 3-D experience than watching today’s social media, a 2-D experience.

infant looking at the face of a stuffed doll with a yellow hat, outfit, and pink ribbon around the hat.
cow overlaid with a faint blurry cow and eyes below showing the pupil alignment for double vision
image of a cow in a field with two eyeballs showing proper eye alignment for single vision

Research Significantly Supports Improved Visual Processing Skills After Vision Therapy

Randomized, Blind Study (221 children 9-17 yrs.) Convergence Insufficiency 12 week Intervention Program Convergence Insufficiency Score (lower number means improvements) % of participant’s meeting goals for near vision convergence skills
Office-based therapy with home exercises 15.1 73%
Office-based non-therapeutic
activities with in-home activities
(placebo group)
21.9 35%
Home-based computer therapy with therapeutic exercises 21.2 33%
Home-based therapeutic exercises 24.7 43%

 

A greater percentage of children (73%) who received an in-office vision therapy program with in-home eye-exercises made significantly more progress resulting in significantly lower convergence difficulties (15.1) when compared to a much lower percentage of participants (35%, 33%, 43%) making some progress who received vision therapy only at home or in-office, non-therapeutic visual activities with in-home visual activities.

Evidence-based Results for Vision Therapy from 9 research sites. (2008). Randomized clinical trial of treatments for symptomatic convergence insufficiency in children. Arch Ophthalmol; 126 (10):1336-1349. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779032/

Visual Processing Difficulties & Behaviors That are Clues

  • Headaches after pushing through visual work (reading)
  • Emotional, irritable, anxious without apparent cause
  • Fearful away from home in safe environments
  • Avoids age-appropriate activities like swings, slides
  • Unable to ride a bike, feels unsafe
  • Child says, “I can’t!” or “I can’t see!”
  • Falls walking up stairs for no reason
  • Unable to alternate feet going up or down the stairs
  • Walks on toes going down a hill
  • Holds tightly to someone’s hand while walking
  • Reading while looking at paper sideways
  • Writes with head tilted

Poor Ear Heath, Chronic Congestion

What happens when preschoolers and children suffer chronic congestion inflaming their eustachian tube with or without an ear infection?

Inflamed eustachian tubes cause mild hearing loss, which distorts sounds making it more difficult to listen with comprehension.  Inflammation of eustachian tubes can last up to three or more weeks. Chronic congestion is a significant concern, because it negatively affects your hearing for prolong periods of time.  Regardless of your age, mild hearing loss greatly impacts more than just your hearing. 

A study completed by Frank Lin at John Hopkins’ Univ. School of Medicine in 2012, found that participants with a very mild hearing loss at 25 decibels were three times more likely to have fallen in the past.  The risk of falling increased almost one and a half times for every ten decibel increase in hearing loss.  “Why?”

Decreased hearing under-stimulates your inner ear’s vestibular system.  The inner ear’s vestibular system coordinates head, neck, and eye movements needed for keeping your balance while walking on uneven surfaces or up and down hills.  Chronic congestion disrupts the stimulation of the vestibular stimulation increasing risk of the development of visual processing difficulties.

Amazingly, I found in all my clients with poor middle ear health, like chronic congestion or untreated hearing loss, resulted in sound intolerance and double vision during close-up visual work.”  Cheri Moore

There are Solutions Towards Improvement

Use the Moore Auditory-Visual Observation Activity booklet to learn about your loved one’s visual and auditory processing skills.

Complete a Moore Auditory-Visual Questionnaire (MAvQ) to receive your MAvQ Report.

Schedule a complimentary phone conference with Cheri.

6 Visual-Motor Preschool Activities With a Twist

6 visual-motor preschool activities with a twist provide opportunities for family fun during the holidays and deep belly laughs. What is the twist? The twist is that all 6 action-packed activities encourage the development of eye movement skills in preschoolers, children, and teens. Eye movement skills develop visual-motor skills.

How Toddler’s Behaviors and Emotions Speak Loudly about Visual Difficulties

Rarely do parents learn how toddlers’ emotions and behaviors are affected by visual processing difficulties. Professionals and doctors ask about behaviors associated with delayed visual-motor skills, speech, or even lack of eye contact. However, these areas of development are affected by visual acuity (20/20 eyesight), eye health, and the development of visual processing skills. 

How to Encourage Eye Movement Skills in Toddlers

Have you ever thought about watching your toddler’s eye movements during purposeful play? When my now young adults were toddlers, I looked at the pictures in the book with them. Once they could sit up, they often sat in my lap leaning against me. Other times, I sat near them with my focus on the toy. Oh how I wished I had known how to encourage eye movement skills in toddlers, also called visual processing skills.

How to Encourage & Observe Baby’s Eye Movements

From the moment of birth, babies start to develop eye movement skills by listening and watching. While your baby moves, sits, or cuddles in your arms, their eyes need to work together to keep their vision clear and single. Over time, eyes learn to work together resulting in instinctive movements, motor coordination, awareness of space between the eyes and an object. Equally important, when what is seen syncs up with what is heard, your baby develops speech. 

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FDA Statement On AIT

"Auditory Integration Training remediateds impairments in auditory discrimination (sound sensitivity and auditory distortion) associated with Autism, Learning Disabilities, and related disorders - ADD, ADHD, CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Deficits), SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder), Dyslexia."

 

Need Help?

Cheri Moore helps children and adults improve their ability to respond and maintain progress after auditory integration training using medically-based testing to guide intervention.