What is Visual Discrimination and How Does It Impact Learning?

What is visual discrimination? The answer to that question is crucial if you have a child struggling with learning.

Picture this. You’ve had a long day. You walk through your front door and are bombarded by clutter. Everywhere.

• Dirty dishes on the counter
• Laundry piles on the couch
• Paperwork strewn everywhere

If you’re anything like me, you may lose your ever-loving mind.

Have you ever handed your child a math worksheet only to watch your kid melt into tears?

Both of these are examples of visual discrimination and its impact on our mental states.

When children resist schoolwork, they often shut down, melt down, or worse. And it’s easy to confuse this behavior as a willful act of disobedience or “laziness.”

But so often it’s not. And so today I’m going to share exactly what is visual discrimination and how it impacts learning.

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a nominal fee from qualifying purchases. Thank you for your support. See my disclosure policy for more info.

Visual Clutter, Stress & Your Struggling Student

Let me start by telling you a little story from my own homeschool.

Last year, my 14-year-old daughter and I were working through some Algebra word problems.

We’d just been introduced to a new concept and were slowly putting the pieces together.

As we began to tackle the problems, she and I both began to feel overwhelmed.  We were working hard to make sense of the new concepts and it just wasn’t clicking.

Bottom line: We were FRUSTRATED.

And you know what was making it worse?!!  The computer screen full of text.

Clutter: A Barrier for Struggling Students

Here’s the thing.

Learning a new skill is not as simple as it may appear on the surface.  Specifically, during that lesson, my girl and I were:

1. Processing a new concept specific to algebraic functions,
2. Reading text from a screen (don’t get me started about screens…) and
3. We were trying to integrate the new math concept with other skills including reading comprehension.

Ultimately, our frustration was either going to make us or break us. I knew I had to do something fast.

Post-it notes & Learning?

Enter in… a HUGE Post-it note.  Here’s why I reached for the sticky note.

Many children and adults struggle with visual discrimination. 

In layman’s terms, visual discrimination is the ability of the brain to tease through all of the input that it receives through the eyes.  

At any given moment, the brain has to process through and zoom in on that which is most important in the particular scenario.

Decisions Use Limited Cognitive Fuel

By removing the unnecessary text from sight, the cognitive load was lessened.

In other words, our brains were more easily able to focus on what was crucial to the math problem at hand.

This, in turn, allowed my daughter (and I) to better process through and make sense of that one specific math problem.

Focus on the GOAL

Why?

We didn’t have to tease through unnecessary visual information in order to focus on what was crucial to the goal.

The goal at that time was to learn the new math concept. In order to do so, we needed to set ourselves up for success.

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Homeschooling Requires Flexible Thinking

Again, when my girl and I became frustrated (and snippy) at one another, I took that as my cue that we both needed a breather. 

I had to make the decision to use my adult executive functioning skills in order to get us on track so we could move forward. 

Ultimately, I knew we needed to pivot quickly or things could go south fast.

Post-Its, Learning & Deep Breaths

I grabbed a large Post-it and covered the entire screen except for the first line of the first word problem.

I took a deep breath and offered this suggestion to my girl. Game changer!!!

“Read it aloud and let’s process what it is saying,”

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Visual Discrimination in Learning & At Home

Think about the many blog posts, books, and TV shows that focus on:

• Decluttering
• minimalism
• organization

There are too many to count. Why are these concepts so popular with adult women and more specifically moms?

Remove Visual Clutter & Open Doors To Learning

Because by simply removing visual clutter, we find ourselves more peaceful and less anxious. 

Clutter increases the need to tease through all of the information our brain receives from the environment.

This is an exercise that requires mental capacity.

Every mom knows that mental capacity is a limited resource that must be used wisely. 

This is true for overwhelmed homeschool moms and for struggling students. 

We must transfer this understanding over to how we equip and support our students.

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Effective Learning: Less Is More

When a child is overwhelmed or feeling even slightly anxious about having to focus on a new or harder concept or skill, the last thing we want to do is add barriers to learning.  

In the case of a child learning a new math concept or skill, lots of text or math problems on a page can be a huge barrier to the goal of learning.

What do we do to help our kids improve their skills, acquire and learn new information?

Another Simple Tip to Help Struggling Students

Instead of an entire sheet of 25 math problems, grab a blank piece of paper and write out one math problem in large text.

That one math problem on a clean sheet of paper is less threatening and now more accessible to your child.

Anxiety lessens and then the brain is then more available to learn.  

I’d rather a child do five math problems and learn for the long term than have a student fight through tears and stress to finish twenty-five.

Small chunks of intentional teaching over time yield fruit.

Remove the Barriers

The next time your child starts to melt down at the thought of reading or doing math, think:

‘Remove the barriers.’  

1. Grab a sticky note and cover up the majority of text on a page and read line by line.
2. Write multiplication problems one at a time on a small whiteboard in LARGE text. 
3. Use a line marker to cover up the lines of text in a book.

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Get Rid of Clutter

Remove the barrier and don’t drain your child’s mental capacity by forcing his brain to wade through a bunch of visual clutter before he masters a new concept.   

Your child’s innate fight-or-flight response will be lessened.

Her ability to receive and process new information will be freed up to actually learn and receive the concept.

Before a child can ever do hundreds of math problems, they must be given the opportunity to succeed at a few.

Slowly over time, you can increase the workload if necessary.

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The Goal is REAL Learning

In the end, always ask:

Do you have a struggling student? ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, or other learning difference? 

Your child can succeed when equipped based on his or her God-given wiring. 

Check out all the homeschool teacher workshops available.

These include:

1. The Unregulated Child: Sensory Systems & Self-Regulation in Your Home & Homeschool
   
2. Homeschooling The Distracted Child: Harnessing the Power of The ADHD Brain
   
3. Huh? How Speech & Language Processing Impacts Reading, Writing & Relationships

Each one-hour in-depth training will equip you to change the trajectory of your entire homeschool.

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This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a nominal fee from qualifying purchases. Thank you for your support. See my disclosure policy for more info.