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Dyslexia Case Study, PART 1: “Excellent Improvement” according to Occupational Therapy Report

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Hannah

Young Hannah entered a remedial school in Grade 1 and started attending their weekly occupational therapy, speech therapy and remedial therapy sessions. Before long, she was diagnosed as severely dyslexic.

While there are other causes, research has shown consistently that deficits in visual perception and visual memory may cause or contribute to dyslexia.

Visual perception refers to the ability to make sense of information taken in through the eyes. This is different from problems involving sight or sharpness of vision. Difficulties with visual perception affect how visual information is interpreted or processed. A child with visual perceptual problems may have 20/20 vision but may have perceptual difficulties.

Visual memory involves the ability to store and retrieve previously experienced visual sensations and perceptions when the stimuli that originally evoked them are no longer present. That is, the person must be capable of making a vivid visual image in his mind of the stimulus, such as a word, and once that stimulus is removed, to be able to visualise or recall this image without help.

Hannah suffered from deficits in both.

Deficits in visual perceptual and visual memory skills

Despite all the help afforded at her remedial school and notwithstanding trialling many other products and programmes, Hannah’s visual perceptual and visual memory skills were still “below average” by the end of her Grade 5 year. See Hannah’s occupational therapy progress report, dated November 2015, below.

Scale: 
3 = Above average (Good)
2 = Average (Satisfactory)
1 = Below average (Experiencing difficulty)
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Finally, improvement! 

Hannah’s mom enrolled her at Edublox in March 2016. Edublox aims at addressing the underlying shortcomings that interfere with academic performance. Underlying shortcomings include visual perception and visual memory. The assessment below is Hannah’s occupational therapy progress report dated November 2016, nine months after starting at Edublox. While her sensory motor functions and learning skills have improved according to the progress report (they were already “satisfactory” in November 2015), her “below average” visual perceptual and visual memory skills have improved drastically.

Visual discrimination: No improvement noted.

Visual memory: Improved from 1 to 3. “Excellent improvement. Well above standard.”

Visual sequential memory: Still a 1. “Excellent improvement, but still below standard.”

Design copying: Improved from 1 to 3. “Excellent improvement. Above standard.”

Figure ground: Improved from 1 to 3. “Excellent improvement. Above standard.”

Spatial relationships: Improved from 1/2 to 3. “Excellent improvement. Well above standard.”

Visual closure: Improved from 1 to 2. “Very good improvement. Now on standard.”

Visual form constancy: Still a 1. “Very good improvement. Just below standard.”

Beery Test: Visual motor integration: Improved from 1 to 2. “Good ability. On standard.”

Beery Test: Visual perception: Improved from 1 to 3. “Excellent improvement. Above standard.”

Beery Test: Motor co-ordination: Improved from 1 to 3. “Excellent improvement. Above standard.”

Scale: 
3 = Above average (Good)
2 = Average (Satisfactory)
1 = Below average (Experiencing difficulty)

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Hannah’s mom wrote…

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We’ll keep you posted on Hannah’s progress… 

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Adele Venter Hannah's mother

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