Left sided neglect and reversed figures in the drawing of a clock by a dyslexic child with unstable binocular control.
Adapted from Stein (Fawcett and Nicholson, Dyslexia in Children).
Visual Issues affecting Dyslexia and Mathematics
With poor binocular vision any learning involving vision will be more difficult. Stein in Dyslexia in Children explains how the behavior of the eyes skews the numbers on the clock to one side of the clock, along with the reversals of numbers.
The clock face is distorted for these individuals and to tell the time will be challenging. Hence eye behavioral correction exercises are top of the priorities in K4N for these types of students. Developing tracking skills for reading from left to right, along with eye hand co-ordination for recording are fundamental principles of K4N.
Often the confusion with direction such as left/right and b/d can extend to confusion with concepts such as clockwise. How can you tell the time from a traditional clock face if you cannot tell which direction is clockwise? K4N encourages the pupil to physically move up and down, left and right, clockwise and anticlockwise and in other ways to address the development of the directional senses.
Behaviour optometrist, Keith Holland describes the visual issues experienced by some children and how this impacts on reading, writing and their mathematical understanding. In this video he explains that mathematics is often a shorthand form of the visual description for: Space, Time, Volume, Height, Breadth, Width and Length.
These pupils will possibly lack good visualization skills and find it difficult to think in spatial terms. They may be able to number crunch and rote learn mathematics but will not have the spatial understanding. Hence graphical work, geometry and trigonometry will all be difficult.
In the following video Professor Amanda Kirby, renowned dyspraxia specialist explains how various visual difficulties can prevent pupils developing mathematical understanding. The Background to Maths Difficulties.
Keith Holland - Behavioural Optometrist talking about visual problems and dyslexia