Just about any learning disability or learning challenge can be traced back to a processing problem. Challenges in processing come in all sorts of shapes. A student can have an auditory or visual processing issue, a dyslexic processing style, comprehension difficulties, trouble maintaining attention long enough to process, weak memory, speech and language disorders, sensory processing issues, organization problems, or simply slow processing to name just a few examples.
Imagine a Road Map
A great visual for understanding what processing is like is to imagine a roadway map for a large city. Processing information uses neuro pathways in our brain just as a trip to the store would use roadways. Each of the roads drawn on a map is like a pathway found in the brain. Roads are being made and added daily. There are literally millions of roads to choose from in the human brain.
Picture a map of your area, and let’s say you needed to go from your home to the market. There would be a few different routes you could take. This is similar with the pathways in our brain. This accounts for one of the reasons someone who has suffered with a brain injury or stroke can re-learn tasks using a different route or part of the brain. A new pathway is created to accomplish the task.
Many tasks require more than one pathway to complete
Just as traveling from home to the market would use multiple pathways, a task needed for work or school also requires several pathways. If a child needs to listen to their teacher and take notes, they would need to take in the sound from their ears, translate the vibrations, and interpret the sounds into language. Next, the impulses would need to cross the corpus collosum and travel to the part of the brain that would attach a picture of letters and words to the sounds. Finally, the impulses travel to the motor control of the brain, which would send impulses to the muscles in the arm and hand so that they could write words down.
If some of the pathways happen to be blocked, missing, or rerouted it will take longer to find the way to completion. This could show up as forgetfulness, a lack of comprehension when reading, or appear as if a child isn’t listening, to name a few. Just as in our driving example, if there is a detour or congestion you may get to the market a little later than planned or perhaps never find the market in the time allotted. It doesn’t mean you didn’t try to get to the market, you just couldn’t. To make things even worse, some people with processing challenges have deficits in more than one processing area, and each time they try to retrace a specific pathway it changes for them. Because of this inconsistency, it can be very difficult for a student to feel organized internally and thus show organization externally.
How can we improve the situation?
There are a variety of therapeutic interventions available that can improve the performance of processing deficits. Many therapies work to retrace processing routes over and over in an effort to make the pathways clearer and more usable. Integrative movement and Neuro-Reflex Integration, can work to re-establish neuro-pathways that were never created strong enough or rehearsed enough to establish a strong pathway or skill.
With the proper intervention program, a child with processing deficiencies can strengthen their neural pathways, helping them to succeed in academic, social, and everyday situations in life.
The Learning Skills Pyramid is the foundation of successful remediation. If you focus on just parts of the problem, therapy will not always bring about the desired results. You’ll be left with missing pieces in your program. And that’s where HOLS comes in. In order to identify the contributing factors, a Functional Academic and Learning Skills Evaluation must be administered to determine the source of the missing pieces. Only then can a comprehensive program be designed that will address your child’s weaknesses in developmental order.