Spelling

The diagram below shows the attention field deflection that occurs when a child with poor eye movement skills and resulting lack of visual dominance tries to spell a word. The child is forced to use auditory/verbal skills instead of the visual thinking tools necessary to perform the task visually, so the child attempts to avoid the task. Because they are required to still try to spell, they have to use another way of performing the task and usually develop a phonetically inventive (spelling words as they sound rather than the way they look) pattern of spelling. Since this generally results in poor performance on spelling tests, the child is required to drill and practice spelling words which reinforces the incorrect method of spelling. Eventually, the child doesn't even try to recognize recently decoded words and instead decodes the words again and writes the letters that make up the sounds of the word.

Unfortunately, phonetically inventive spelling has become popular as a way for a teaching program to encourage children to practice writing before they are competent in spelling which also tends to embed the deflected spelling pattern. Since education does not recognize the importance of proper eye movement skills, visual imagery, and visual dominance, this has become a dangerous factor in the epidemic increase in learning disabilities in the United States.

Treatment of spelling problems begins with the treatment of the underlying functional visual problems. Once the individual has acquired good eye movement and visualization skills, the concept of recognizing "the look of words" rather than sounding them out can be introduced. The success of visual recognition is extremely important when working with all aspects of written language including spelling, reading, and handwriting. Visual recognition of words is the key skill that separates successful students from unsuccessful students. As with reading, it is important to follow the normal developmental sequence of visual cognitive skills as illustrated below.