What is perceptual therapy?

Perceptual therapy is a form of vision training that focuses on teaching the brain how to accurately analyze and interpret what it sees.  Perceptual therapy is similar to vision therapy, but instead of building connections between the eye and the brain, the emphasis is building neural connections between the different regions of the brain that are responsible for our perceptual skills.  Fortunately, visual perception is learned, so people with perceptual disorders can be taught how to process what they see.

Who needs perceptual therapy?

Anyone experiencing the following symptoms would most likely benefit from perceptual therapy:

• Confuses right and left
• Confuses letters, words, simple shapes, or forms
• Mistakes words with similar beginnings
• Reverses letters or words
• Can’t distinguish the main idea from insignificant details
• Has trouble learning basic math concepts of size, magnitude, and position
• Has difficulty recognizing the same word on a different page
• Has difficulty with memory
• More easily remembers things heard than seen
• Misplaces or loses papers, objects, and belongings
• Has difficulty following a sequence of directions
• Has trouble visualizing what is read resulting in poor reading comprehension
• Poor speller
• Has a poor sense of direction
• Has difficulty traveling to a known location when starting from a different start point
• Has suffered from a brain injury