WHAT IS THE VISUAL SENSORY?
Visual sensory system is self-explanatory and the one that responds to color stimuli, light intensity and color contrasts. It is the visual sensory system that enables us to see the world and environment around us. The brain is responsible for processing the visual sensory information about the shapes, sizes, contour, texture of objects and the environment around us, and this property is called the visual processing. Visual sensory system controls the various aspects of vision like oculomotor nerve control and the controlling of movement of eyes.
Visual sensory stimulus
It is the stimulus that excites the visual sensory receptors like rods and cones in the eyes. Cones and rods are used for the processing of color and black and white vision respectively.
WHAT ARE THE VISUAL SENSORY ACTIVITIES?
Visual sensory activities are the ones that ignite the sense of sight. These activities help the children and patients in their exploration and facilitate them to use visual sensory systems in their scientific activities. The activities performed by visual sensory systems are diverse and innovative in their mode of action. Visual sensory activities intend for the skill enhancement and proper focus at the visual events around you. The list of important visual sensory activities is:
- Recognition of letter/symbols/alphabets
- Understanding the spatial relationships of body
- Better peripheral vision.
The visual sensory activities are the ones that help your child build a strong vision power. Visual sensory activities count for the proper growth of visuals and the processing of these visual sensory activities is a complex procedure. These visual sensory activities can be improved if someone is showing an abnormal behavior towards light stimulus, experiencing sensory visual difficulties or not facing the color contrasts properly. Specific visual sensory activities can be improved by:
Drawing activities
- Children are promoted to make different shapes, write numbers and alphabets by making the use of different materials like markers, pens, water paints and sand clay.
- Ask the students to trace different shapes and drawings from some other medium.
- Ask the students to draw the shapes and write the numbers as dictated by their instructor
Matching activities
- Write different letters in card papers and then cut the card paper in two halves. Ask the children to identify the letters from the card halves.
- Play an activity with the children asking them to match the items having the same color or collect the words starting from the similar letters and group them together.
- This is the most beneficial activity for the improvement of visual sensory activities. It encourages the children to match the pictures with the dictated words.
Following the instructor
Ask the students to follow dot to dot on paper. Students are asked to follow a peer around an obstacle course.
DIY color bottles
Design the DIY bottles using various colors and their combinations. Then ask the children showing abnormal visual sensory response to identify these colors one by one.
Scissoring activities
For the improvement for sensory visual activities, students are asked to cut around the figures.
Tracking activities
The instructor moves the object around a specific track and then the children are asked to follow the same track with their eyes. This performance would enhance the sensory visual to follow the objects around in an environment.
Throwing the objects and asking the children to catch them
Spotting the activities
Present a tray full of different objects to the child and remove a specific object from the tray. Ask the student to spot that missing object.
These activities are designed to improve the sensory visual activities for the children between the age group 4 TO 11. Likewise each age group has specific activities to practice for enhancing their visual sensory system.
VISUAL SENSORY ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS
These visual sensory activities are practiced by the toddlers till they get themselves into their pre schools. Several sensory visual activities are designed for kids to enhance their sensory visuals. Parents are encouraged to take their toddlers and kids outside in order to increase the range of visual sensory activities experienced by their visual sensory system in the environment around them. Some of the outside visual sensory activities for kids include:
Grass spotting: fill a large bin with the grass and insert some coins, toys inside the bin. Ask the kids to locate the things around using their eyes just.
Backyard toy game: this visual sensory activity is specially designed for the visual sensory system and visual sensory memory development and maturation. The instructor first spreads the different toys in the backyard area and children are asked to look at them for a definite period of time and remember them. Now some of the toys are covered and some are removed. The cover is removed and the children are encouraged to spot the missing toys.
Cloud monitoring: parents should lay down with their children on the ground and start monitoring the clouds in the clear sky. The child is asked to fix the clouds shapes. Now let the child rotate on the ground and ask again if the child is feeling the same shape. This visual sensory activity for kids lets them discover the shapes and outlines of various objects and the keen development of the visual sensory system.
Catch a ball: Ask the child to catch the rolling ball whether he is sitting or standing. This visual sensory activity for kids leads to the development of their focus towards the visual stimuli.
Catching butterflies: in a net, hitting the objects at the given targets
Bubble popping: The parents are advised to let the child practice the bubble popping with toe, knee, and feet.
These visual sensory activities for kids are meant for the development of their sensory visual system. Some children show abnormal visual sensory responses such as demonstrated by the Visual Cheat Sheet. This sheet demonstrates that covering eyes, avoiding bright stimuli, frequent dizziness, rubbing of eyes, lacking experience of contrasting colors and avoidance of direct eye contact with persons are some of the visual sensory avoiding behaviors.
Whereas some responses such as staring at the bright lights, holding the objects too close for inspection and moving the head during various routine activities are visual sensory seeking behaviors. Both of these abnormal behaviors can be improved and even corrected by performing the visual sensory activities in general and special visual sensory activities for kids like flashlight tag, sensory bottles, drawing , painting, color matching games and labyrinths solving etc.
VISUAL SENSORY AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER ASD
What is visual ASD?
Processing of visual sensory information called visual processing is greatly compromised in patients with autism spectrum disorder. Autism spectrum disorder is the complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by altered perception of visual stimuli, disturbed social interactions and exhibition of awkward behavior towards touch and light stimuli. The symptoms of visual ASD start appearing in children at the age of 6 to 12 months.
Visual sensory processing is markedly altered and the affected children prefer to isolate details and perseverate visual attention on the continuously performed visual sensory activities. To make the brain aware of its surroundings, such children usually opt to look at their sides. Balance and equilibrium is often disturbed in patients with visual ASD and such children tend to fall forward or backward.
These visual ASD affected kids have developed the potential to walk on their toes, a specific walk pattern called toe-walking. Such children tend to continuously touch the other objects and people near them to maintain their visual sensory strike and this phenomenon was specially observed in children at public places.
Symptoms of visual ASD
Repetitive behaviors like hand flapping and jumping, constant pacing and fixations on specific activities and extreme sensitivity to light and sound are some of the major symptoms of visual autism spectrum disorder.
Clinical findings of patients with visual ASD
- The individuals affected with this disorder also show indifference to pain stimuli, potential adverse response to some sounds, hyper-smelling, increased tendency to touch the objects and many different types of visual hallucinations.
- Rubbing of eyes is one of the most pronounced features of visual ASD.
- About more than 40% of the individuals affected with this visual ASD are known to claim strabismus eye also.
- Children with visual ASD are noticed to produce a special type of laughter called Voiced laughter which has a rhythmical, song-like quality.
- Such children are more interested in learning letters and symbols. These affected children are not able to properly mimic the facial and other body expressions of other people.
Treatment of visual ASD
The visual autism spectrum disorder ASD was corrected by increasing the use of Yoked prisms which are considered responsible for maintaining the visual midline correctly aligned. After the implementation of yoked prisms, the children who tend to touch other people and objects, aligned their visual midline and stopped touching the objects within a week. Some of the prescriptive lenses with the prisms are also in practice for the treatment of visual ASD.
