Does your child struggle with reading? Or have difficulty completing a puzzle? It could be a visual closure problem.
The ability to quickly view parts of objects and mentally determine what they are before seeing the entire object is important for reading quickly and fluently, and for predicting differences in similar words.
Schedule an evaluation with a vision therapy eye doctor who can help improve any visual problems your child may have.
SEE RELATED: Signs of Visual Processing Information Dysfunction
What is visual closure?
Visual closure is the ability to visualize a complete whole when given incomplete information or a partial picture.
This ability helps children to read and comprehend information quickly; their eyes don’t need to process each letter in each word separately in order to understand the word by sight.
Visual closure allows a person to differentiate between words that sound similar, especially those with similar beginnings or endings. It can also help children recognize inferences and make predictions.
Signs of poor visual closure
Your child might have trouble with visual closure if they exhibit the following visual processing symptoms:
- Needs extra time to sound out words they already learned
- Trouble finding an item if part of it is hidden
- Trouble pulling the correct paper or book from a stack
- Trouble putting together jigsaw puzzles
- Trouble with games that require guessing an item based on a close-up photo
If you suspect a problem in your child’s vision, contact an eye doctor near you, to have your child’s vision evaluated.
How vision therapy can help
Vision therapy can improve visual closure skills through eye exercises that help retrain the eyes and brain to work together.
These exercises will improve not only a child’s visual closure problem, but also strengthen their word recognition and reading skills to improve their learning and overall school performance.
LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision and Learning Difficulties
Schedule an eye exam with an eye doctor near you who can diagnose and treat any vision problems your child may have.
