Visual Processing Disorder

Westley was quite a trooper. He endured three hours of testing and the results are amazing! Here's a quote from the report:

"Westley was found to have Ocular Motor Dysfunction Deficiencies of Pursuit Eye Movements (poor eye tracking), Ocular Motor Dysfunction Deficiencies of Saccadic Eye Movements (poor eye aiming skills), Accommodative Dysfunction (poor focus flexibility), and Convergence Insufficiency (inability for eyes to move inward). Westley was also found to have Binocular Dysfunction (inability to use both eyes together smoothly, equally and accurately).

"Westley also has visual-information-processing difficulties.
The Test of Visual Perceptual Skills revealed some low percentile ranks:
Visual Discrimination: The ability to pick out similarities and differences in size, shape, pattern form, position and color. Westley's percentile rank was 39%.
Visual Memory: The ability to remember forms (letters) and sequences (words) and recognize them quickly when seen again in print. Westley's percentile rank was 14%.
Visual Spatial Relations: The ability to judge the relative position of one object to another and the internal awareness of the tho sides of the body and the orientation of objects (such as "b,d,p,q"). Westley's percentile rank was 18%.
Visual Form-Constancy: The ability to manipulate visual figures and recognize them even when they are in different orientation or format (such as recognizing a script O of "Once upon a time" even though you may have never seen it shaped like that before). Westley's percentile rank was 70%.
Visual Sequential Memory: The ability to remember forms (letters) in a sequence. Westley's percentile rank was 53%.
Visual Figure-Ground: The ability to locate a figure or distinct shape against a busy background (such as crowded numbers or words on a page). Westley's percentile rank was 1%.
Visual Closure: The ability to identify or recognize a symbol or object without seeing all of the object or detail (such as knowing the whole word without having to look at each of the letters every time you see it). Westley's percentile rank was 3%."

It is recommended that Westley participate in a Visual Therapy program to recover these deficiencies in visual processing. It is expected that in time, with a lot of work, he'll be able to improve dramatically. In the mean time, I find myself amazed that he's gotten by for so long with these problems. The increased eye fatigue from working with this set of problems has contributed to the lazy eye and refractive problems. It is amazing that he's learned how to read and do math. It's hard for him and it takes more time than it should take. We will be addressing the problem from many angles. We will be increasing his Occupational Therapy, addressing the Visual Processing. We will be meeting with the school team to write some accommodations. Enlarging everything, double spacing everything, isolating everything, providing copies of class notes, etc. There is a special lab he attends now that helps with visual processing. There is a vision specialist who works with the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind who will be working with him as well. When we're not in school, perhaps the summer time, we will spend some time in a neighboring big city, getting some visual therapy there too. Hopefully this time next year will be a much clearer one for Westley. It's common for an autistic person to have multiple sensory processing disorders. Addressing this one will likely improve the autistic symptoms we see. Glad we know, wish we'd found it sooner, looking forward to improving it and helping him.