Audio Visual
December 26, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
“Autistic persons are very visual.” How often have you heard this? (For instance, from the writer, animal livestock facility expert, and animal science professor Temple Grandin with her notion of “thinking of pictures.”)
As a result of his learning to play the piano, I am becoming less and less sure that my son Charlie is a “visual learner.” Using a picture schedule does help him to deal with uncertain situations and transition moment. Charlie’s eyes do not converge and he has struggled a lot to learn to read (he has learned 15 sight words in his home ABA program, all nouns). He has always responded quickly to music. He is, I think more and more, an auditory learned.
What about you or your child?
I’m personally more “visual” but I know that this isn’t the case for all autistic people, and also, that different kinds of learning can occur through different sensory channels for different people. I do have a good memory for songs and stories and soundtracks if I hear them repeated enough, but following conversations is something I find very difficult.
My son is congenitally blind and has Aspergers. He is an auditory learner and has an excellent memory. We have sometimes referred to him as having a “photographic” memory, despite the fact that he doesn’t see.
Lots of thoughts [vision therapy?] Auditory processing is great for one of them. Another learns best Kinesthetically [after long period of visual observation first] Complex and changes over time. Cheers
Brendan, as I have mentioned before, did not have binocular convergence before the age of 7, & needed 1 1/2 years of intensive visual/perceptual therapy to gain it. I always have a negative reaction to these sweeping generalisations about autistic (or any type of) people, partly because it does not recognise for the uniqueness of each individual- it does seem particularly idiotic to make sweeping generalisations about the neurodiverse, doesn’t it? Brendan is a strong aural learner, which is one reason we’re studying Japanese. My sense is that he gets less information than most do from visual information because he did not develop the habit early-on of looking at things to get information. Whatever the case, he’s a bright kid & clearly has developed a learning style that works for him…
Megan has great auditory recall for music and can associate an instrumental movie soundtrack with exact moments/scenes in a movie. She does not like others in the family singing along to music as “they always sing wrong.” But she needs lots of visual aids to help in school and has real trouble answering questions I give orally. She is a sight reader and learned phonics later and gets all her spelling words right after looking at the list once. Some have suggested she may also have CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder) as she has real trouble with multi-step directions and understanding an oral lecture. So it’s an interesting mix we’re dealing with!
Starting Charlie on the piano really opened my ears (eyes?) to where one of his not fully acknowledged abilities is: His auditory ability. I keep trying to think of ways to use this to boost his learning in any area.
Im a kinesthetic learner with an eidetic memory and who still needs visual schedules. figure that out. hee
Henry seems to really be an auditory learner- the way he picks up and repeats so many things that he hears…