Challenges of Visual Processing: Effects on Learning and Strategies

This report examines the multifaceted challenges of visual processing disorders and their impact on learning. It explores the different types of visual processing issues, including difficulties with figure-ground discrimination, visual discrimination, motor skills, sequencing, memory, spatial relations, and symbol/letter reversal. The report delves into how these challenges affect reading, spelling, and mathematical abilities, highlighting the link between visual processing disorders and conditions like dyslexia. Furthermore, it discusses the socioeconomic difficulties faced by students with visual processing issues and emphasizes the importance of parental involvement and early intervention strategies. The report also provides practical suggestions for improving visual perceptual skills at the grade R level and identifies factors that support visual processing, including visual memory, attention, and sensory processing. The report also touches on the correlation with ADD/ADHD. The report concludes with a call to action to help students who struggle with visual processing challenges.

Running head: CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Challenges of Visual Processing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Executive Summary:
Visual processing or perception disorder affects many peers or students as they have been
diagnosed with problems, for example, reading, identifying letters and words, understanding and
performing tasks, which causes learning disability that can show some adverse effects further.
Along with learning disability, students struggling with vision problem also face difficulty in
performing basic life tasks as well, so it is vital to treat the visual problem in order to make them
learn better. There are several strategies used by teachers to improve the students learning ability
and improve their vision disorder, which will benefit them in the long run.

2
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Visual Processing:...........................................................................................................................3
Types of Visual Processing:........................................................................................................4
 Visual figure-ground discrimination issues:.....................................................................4
 Visual discrimination issues:............................................................................................4
 Visual-motor processing issues:........................................................................................4
 Visual sequencing issues:..................................................................................................4
 Visual long or short term memory issues:........................................................................4
 Visual-Spatial issues:........................................................................................................4
 Symbol and Letter reversal issues:....................................................................................4
 Visual closure issues:........................................................................................................4
Effects of Visual Processing in learning:.....................................................................................5
Matters Affecting Visual Perception:..........................................................................................6
Socio-economic difficulties of Visual processing:..................................................................7
Parental involvement:..............................................................................................................8
Improving visual perceptual skill on grade R level:................................................................8
Factors supporting visual processing:..........................................................................................9
Visual processing identification:...............................................................................................10
ADD/ADHD and Dyslexia:...................................................................................................10

3
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................11

4
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Introduction:
Visual processing disorder can be found in many students all around the world, but still
according to facts 65% students are visual learners, 5% kinetic learners and 30% auditory
learners, which shows the importance of visual learning (Sless, 2019). The visual literacy and
visual processing development focus on the growth of students educational process and
expansion of skill-based performances, which stimulates student’s ability in terms of identifying,
reading, understanding and writing and performing using several strategies. This paper aims to
focus on the visual processing challenges and its implementation in the classroom by the teacher
for the students who are dealing with visual impairment.
Visual Processing:
Visual processing is the process in which a learner will be able to identify and distinguish
a letter, a word, a symbol and one word or letter from another. This can be seen mostly among
kids that they often get confused between letters, for example, p for q, w form, and b for d, and
words, for example, saw for was, left for feeling. It is a complex process in which the brain is
responsible for receiving a visual form of information from the outside world and use and
interpret it in another way. The method helps the brain in creating a meaningful image that
makes sense with the help of all the things and information in the world that we visualise around
us. A computational challenge has been possessed on the brain by this process. The light first
enters through the cornea, then the light is bent and passes through the pupil, then from the pupil,
it passes through the lens, from the glass the light bends to a higher degree and it focuses on the
retina, this all process happens on an anatomical level. The retina is placed in that portion of an
eye where the photoreceptors are located, which are also called the light-sensing cells group.

5
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Photoreceptors are of two types, cones and rods. Bright lights are transduced by cones and rods
have dim light sensitivity. The impact of visual processing is massive on reading ability and
learning ability and the process of retaining information. 75% of the school learning is directed
by visual processing (Pegado, 2014); the student is all using their vision to read their books and
the blackboard by identifying letters, words, symbols, and retaining information and carrying out
the learning process.
Types of Visual Processing:
There are eight types of visual processing issues:
 Visual figure-ground discrimination issues: having trouble distinguishing a shape or a
letter from its background.
 Visual discrimination issues: facing difficulty in differentiating between similar types of
letters and shapes.
 Visual-motor processing issues: facing difficulty coordinating in observing a still thing
with its movement; troubling in writing into the lines.
 Visual sequencing issues: trouble in seeing the letters and shapes in proper order.
 Visual long or short term memory issues: struggle to recognise the letters, shapes, and
symbols which make it difficult to read.
 Visual-Spatial issues: difficulty in making out the space between objects or how close or
far the objects are.
 Symbol and Letter reversal issues: finds difficulty in switching letters, for example,
making mistakes in writing ‘p’ for ‘q’.
 Visual closure issues: struggling in identifying objects when only they are partially
visible (Hakkahan, Pullen, and Ward, 2014).

6
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Effects of Visual Processing in learning:
Visual Processing Issues or disorder does affect the learning procedure in many ways; it
interrupts and causes difficulties in reading, understanding, as well as writing ability. This
disorder causes trouble in navigating the letters, shapes, and symbols, due to which problem in
learning math and reading disability might occur. Vision disorder is not the only main reason for
such issues; instead, it is also because of the brain that uses and interprets wrong pieces of
information (Serafini, 2014).
Dyslexia is another similar type of disorder, where a learner finds it difficult to learn and
struggles to process even the most essential abilities, like, reading and writing seems complicated
to the learner. Although Dyslexia and Visual Processing Disorder are similar in some sense,
however, they are two different types of disorders, and the causes are also different (Brian,
Haegele & Bostick, 2016). People who suffer from this type of disorder are affected by visual
dyslexia. In this carrying, an individual is prone to transposing symbols and letters and struggles
in finding letters and words in a paper, and they might skip or miss a few letters and words while
reading, which results in difficulty of learning or wrong learning. Such disruptions can severely
affect the learning process as well as the learning outcome of a student (Ziegler, Perry & Zorzi,
2014).
The first step for learning is ‘seeing’, then ‘identifying’ and then ‘understanding’.
In terms of ‘spelling’, it is the process of forming word by using the right letters with a
proper sound that they represent. The Visual processing disorder can negatively affect a student
in learning the spelling; those who are not capable to retain and retrieve information that is
collected through visual stimulus can face difficulty in the learning process (Cortiella &
Horowitz, 2014). Kids face problem often in remembering the letter and their direction, as the

7
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
some of the letters are funny, if they are placed in a different direction they might not make any
sense or make some wrong sense, for example, if you flip the letter small ‘p’ it will become
small ‘q’, and if we move the letter ‘p’ then it will become ‘b’, confuses the learners and also
words, for example, ‘sleep’ and ‘peel’, pear’ and ‘pair’ confuses people to a great extent
(Notredame et al., 2014). Due to the difficulty in identifying spelling correctly and afterwards
the struggle in identifying the right word, it leads to frustration in reading, kids who are unable to
locate and read the words will automatically face problem in reading and understanding a text
(Bosse et al., 2015). In terms of mathematics also the lack of identifying skill, reading skill and
understanding skill will negatively affect the process of learning mathematics numbers and
formulas and solving them. To understand math one has to have a strong calculation skill for
which thinking and imagination skill is needed, but the first thing that it requires is visual-spatial
as well as visual-motor processing skill, to know to understand the speed and time equations, as
math is not just about book knowledge but it is also present in our daily practical life (Cowan and
Powell, 2014). Visual skill is essential even in terms of sports and other physical activities, for
example, to throw a ball to a specific, distance one has to know that how much force it requires
for a ball to reach that distance. Proper visual-spatial skill is also needed in many other tasks
other than education, for example, tying a shoelace (Shabiralyani, Hasan, Hamad and Iqbal,
2015).
Matters Affecting Visual Perception:
The perpetual visual skill is essential for learners in terms of achieving learning skill, for
example, writing, reading, painting, solving math problems, drawing; also visual perpetual
processing is vital for some other practical life skills, for example, solving puzzles, tying laces,
and many more. Unless a learner is able to perform these basic everyday tasks which are

8
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
mentioned, a kid’s performance will get compromised and negatively affected. The causes of
visual perception as well as visual-motor (Sáez, Román, & Vázquez, 2016).
Factors that lead to visual perception:
 Visual memory: it retains visual experiences.
 Visual discrimination: the ability to remember the visual image details.
 Visual attention: it filters out the irrelevant information from and meditates the relevant
ones from visual images.
 Sensory processing: it gathers sense from one’s own body and environment and uses it
effectively (Miller, Fuller and Roetenberg, 2014).
 Visual-spatial relationships: it is a vital perpetual skill which is useful to perform several
functional tasks.
 Visual sequential memory: the ability to remember visual information in a proper
sequence.
 Visual closure: the potential to visualise the complete information and provide an
incomplete or partial image or information.
 Visual form constancy: it is a perception skill and ability to recognise things and their
change in size, shape and colour.
 Visual figure-ground: it focuses on one specific information.
Socio-economic difficulties of Visual processing:
Study says that vision problem in children must be treated at a very early stage because if
this problem is left untreated, it could affect the children’s social skill and their life throughout.
There are several types of vision disorder and all of them has different symptoms and different
student has different symptoms of vision disorder and that’s why it was the teachers

9
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
responsibility to provide such guidance which will work for maximum student as well as some
specific guidance for some special children who needs special guidance (McLinden et al., 2016).
Visual impairment not only affects what a child learns, but also the capability to execute
commonplace tasks such as sorting a variety of objects or playing a soccer game. This may lead
to socialization problems or frustration and withdrawal. The children with a vision problem will
suffer from the issue of year repetition and getting inclusive or special education, which is cost-
effective and low learning ability will lead to low literacy level, and that will ultimately affect
the earning capability in future, which will show a negative impact on the economy (Wolffe et
al., 2015).
Parental involvement:
The parents should know about the perception of activities and their involvement in the
process in order to shape the system of visual processing. Multisensory learning can be helpful
for the children to deal with their disability, and the help of the parents they can florish better in
all aspects. Children who have concern taking in visual information can be helped by hands-on
activities as well as by listening by their parents. The integration of proper parental law will
ultimately lead to the child's development, the difference in the process of perception for the
betterment of children will lead to lack of acquiring knowledge and understanding of children in
terms of home learning as well school learning (Grabe & Stoller, 2019).
Improving visual perceptual skill on grade R level:
• Playing games helps in learning physical movements of objects and their speed and
timing and also by observing things they get to know about the shapes and sizes of them.

10
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
• Drawing pictures helps in lining up things and make the focus steady. Also, it improves
the knowledge of colors and their combinations.
• Sensory activities help in improving imagining skill (Hulme, 2014).
• Flashcard games help in identifying objects and things and remember them now and then.
• Search word puzzle enhances the knowledge about words, and it helps in gathering the
knowledge of a lot of new words.
• Visual focus practice helps in focusing on one thing or many things which ultimately
improves the concentration.
• Eliminate visual distractions again helps in concentrating on just one thing at on time
which is essential to keep the work organised.
• Organising ideas, for example, maintaining the study desk helps in becoming responsible
and stay organised.
• Alphabet cards placed on all visible places, so that the kid can see and memorise it now
and then.
• Usage of graph paper for learning sizing and spacing and mathematics, which helps in
doing some specific math sums and improves the idea of shape and size of things.
• Draw correct line alignment helps in doing a polished work which will not look clumsy
instead look professional.
By the incorporation of these strategies, the student will learn in better and it will also
help them in speeding up their learning process by dealing with their visual impairment at the
same time (Ziegler, Perry & Zorzi, 2014).

11
CHALLENGES OF VISUAL PROCESSING
Factors supporting visual processing:
Students those who have visual processing issues will eventually face problem in their
learning process, and to avoid those problems, teachers can incorporate various strategies and
accommodations in the classroom to help children in their learning procedure, here are a few
strategies that can be used:
 Let the student read the text aloud in the classroom.
 Let them describe a visual image out loud in front of all the students.
 Tell them to use a highlighter to highlight words or sentences which they find difficult to
understand, also they use it for highlighting important information.
 Use graph paper to help them draw figures and know shapes accurately and also to know
the math calculation and equations and figure based solutions.
 Tell them to take essential notes from the information that are learning.
 Use teaching-learning materials like charts, pictures, videos and many such things to help
the children understand topics better.
 Make them meditate in a playful way to improve their concentration.
 Let them open up with their problems and the issues they face while learning.
 Playfully teach them.
 Check the skill regularly by taking tests in the class or by asking them a random question
from their text (Ashman and Conway, 2017).
Visual processing identification:
An assessment in visual processing the age-appropriate and specific research-based
information, are used for the identification of a student and its ability to perceive and process
data which are gathered visually (Lieberman et al., 2014). This allows the teachers to identify the