Hyperactivity, Impulsivity, and Disorganization

Many children who are too visually active rely too much on touch as their main means of gathering information from their surroundings. In normal development, "visual touch" eventually replaces actual touch when the child is exploring their world. When good eye movement skills are present, visual perception matches tactile (touch) perception so vision can be substituted for touch experiences. So vision becomes an extension or replacement of the hand as the primary way of getting information from their world. Since visual exploration is much more efficient, it becomes the dominant mode of exploration. Children who do not have good eye movement skills do not have a perceptual match between vision and touch, and this is the major cause of persistent physical exploration. It is normal for touch to be the dominant mode of exploration at an early age. However, as they come out of the "terrible twos", the important transition from touch to visual exploration takes place. The illustration below shows why touch exploration may not be replaced with visual exploration.

Overly active children usually show exploratory behavior that is not drive by vision. Since these children failed to develop good eye movement skills, they tend to have unreliable visual experiences which keep them from being able to count on vision to give good information about the world around them. We believe that "hyperactive" children are those who are unable to accurately explore their world visually and have not been able to transition from touch exploration that is normal in early development to visual exploration.

The medications often given for ADHD are intended to inhibit this physical exploration but do not solve the problem of lack of the ability to perform visual exploration. We believe that a far superior approach to this problem is to help the child become more visually competent and reduce the need to explore their world physically.

The lack of transition from physical touch to "visual touch" also causes impulsivity and disorganization. As visual skills improve and touch is replaced with visual exploration, the child becomes less impulsive and more "reflective" as they learn to "see" into the future. The diagram below illustrates this process.

Seeing into the future and predicting potential consequences of actions helps to modify impulsive behavior. Imagery is the "thinking tool" that allows people with good visual skills to organize and predict future activity. An individual plans future activity through time and space by "seeing" the future through visualization. Those with poor visual skills have difficulty organizing their activity, they predict time poorly, and they often forget routine or sequential tasks to the point that it seems incredible to people with normal visual abilities. People with poor visual skills seem to live in the here and now whereas people with good visual skills spend much of their attention imaging past and future events. Seeing the future consequences of current actions is obviously important in reducing impulsivity and character development.