Why Visual Processing Matters More Than You Think in Early Reading

Understanding the visual skills behind reading readiness and how to strengthen them through play

Literacy for Littles is a warm collection of early reading tips, favorite tools, and real-life learning curves from raising young readers. Powerful insights I’d share with a fellow parent.

---

Reading is so much more than just deciphering symbols on a page. When children read, they need to learn to coordinate a complex range of visual and motor skills, across four different domains in their brain. By controlling focus, sustaining alignment, controlling eye movement and syncing everything together in the brain, we are able to make sense of written words.

Research suggests around 30% of struggling readers have a deficit in visual processing.

Visual skills are best developed at home during play in the younger years as your child explores their environment. Encourage play with puzzles, toys and crafts that are visually stimulating, and introduce activities that promote complete sensory integration.

Visual Skills

Some of the following visual skills (there are up to 19 of them!) are essential not just for reading but for writing, daily activities, and sports. If one or more skill is under-developed, your child may have difficulty reading, which can have a knock-on effect on their school performance and wellbeing in general.

• Central visual acuity – the accuracy of vision, measured in terms of feet away from an object. 20/20 vision is “perfect” vision, i.e. seeing clearly from 20 feet away.

• Eye movement control – the ability to coordinate the tiny muscles of both eyes so they move together as you track over the page.

• Near and far focus, either simultaneous and sustained – seeing a clear, focused image up close and far away, either for brief moment or for prolonged periods. Sustained near focus is especially important for reading.

• Near and far alignment, either simultaneous or sustained – the ability to align eyes at some point, either close or far, for a moment or prolonged period. Near sustained alignment is essential for reading; without it, people’s vision blurs or doubles.

• Depth perception and color vision perception – coordinating information from the eyes to determine the nearness or farness of objects, or tell colors apart from one another. This is more relevant in athletics or daily activities.

• Fine and gross visual motor skills – performing small and detailed visual tasks (like reading) or moving through the environment without bumping into things (as in sports).

• Visual discrimination skills - the ability to discern differences between two different things, such as the letter K vs H.

Eye Exam

If you notice your child constantly rubbing their eyes, tilting their head, covering one eye, squinting, sitting too close to the TV, being clumsy, showing reading difficulties or being unable to focus, they may be struggling with their eyesight.

By around 6 or 7 years of age, most children will have begun to read properly, but it’s always important to monitor their development to make sure their visual skills are functioning well. The American Optometric Association recommends that school-aged children are tested before first grade and then yearly in every subsequent grade. Fortunately, if vision problems are discovered early on, they can be corrected before they have the opportunity to interfere with your child’s learning.

It’s important to understand a general eye exam evaluates eye sight and does not identify deficits tracking or processing.