Delay in visual perception - anyone know about this?

[Anna85]

My DS who is 5 went to have his motor skills assessed. As I thought there was no problems with that side of things but the OT did say he is around 1.5 years behind on visual perception.

He has to copy what was written on a booklet but he found this difficult. Just wondering if anyone has any experience on this?

Also wasn't sure if that was linked to dyslexia as he does get letters muddled up namely b, d etc and will occasionally think a letter is a number etc!

Thanks for your help! x

Yes, visual perception problems can cause you to reverse letters, and he may well have other visual problems like find it difficult to scan from right to left.

If these vision problems aren't corrected a child can often get misdiagnosed with dyslexia.

Here's a little bit more about visual perception problems: www.dyslexiaadvice.co.uk/vision.html

But basically, you can do exercises to improve it and having caught it at 5 it should be totally correctable.

So is it totally different from dyslexia then as when you read up on it, it sounds the same?

The OT did say she was sending a programme so must have been exercises to help him! x

My Dd3 has poor visual perception, it was noticed at 8 by OT's, she struggles with rotating shapes in maths and copying, she used to reverse letters and numbers alot but I thought that was because she is a leftie.

She is currently being assessed for aspergers so I am concentrating on that at the moment.

Good luck with you Ds

Thank u - DS does have ASD but we originally thought he found writing difficult due to laxity in his wrists but he was scored for the visual perception as a 4 year old.

Anna85

Firstly a diagnosis of dyslexia only means that there is a problem processing the visual notation of speech, which can be a symptom of auditory processing, visual processing, attention issues of any combination of the three.

There are a wide range of visual issues which can cause the dyslexic symptom
You could have a look at my PubMed Dyslexia and Visual Processing and Visual Processing research paper collections.

Many who have ASD can have related attention issues, and visual attention issues can feature as underlying cognitive causes of the dyslexic symptom.

Anna85

I forgot, to mention you may find graphic explanation of the dbqp issues with the graphic at the bottom of my Dyslexia web page called "Take a Spin". The "Greenie" is the same regardless of how you view the graphic

The inspiration for this came from How Difficult Can This Be? The F.A.T. City Workshop, by Richard Lavoie

ds2 has visual perception problems, he cant judge depth or distance or speed. means he trips over things, struggles on the stairs also he cannot read or write etc.
vp can & often does improve with age & there are visual exercises that can help.

He has no problems with judging distance I don't think as he doesn't trip but its more the reading and writing aspect and getting letters/numbers muddled up!

If you would like to find out more about visual perceptual problems, this is a good website: www.visuallearningforlife.com This website also has a checklist that you can use to help you pinpoint which areas of visual perception DS may be struggling with.

Yes it could indicate a specific learning difficulty but an EP would need to assess this to be sure.