Neural Pathways of Hope

Have you ever asked a child a question they know the answer to, but they seem to need extra time before responding? Maybe a student understands a lesson when it is explained verbally but struggles when the same information is presented on a busy worksheet. Or perhaps someone can read words on a page but has difficulty making sense of spoken directions—especially in a noisy environment.

These difficulties can sometimes involve processing—the way we take in information, make sense of it, and respond.

Processing isn’t one single cognitive skill. How quickly we process information matters, but so does the way our brain interprets what we see and hear. Three important areas to consider are processing speed, visual processing, and auditory processing.

Understanding these differences can help us move beyond assuming someone is “slow,” “not listening,” or “not paying attention” and begin asking a better question: How is this learner processing the information they’re receiving?

Processing Speed

Processing speed refers to how efficiently a person can take in information, interpret the information, and respond to it. This is not simply the rate at which someone hears information, but the rate at which the brain hears it, makes sense of it, and is then able to respond to it.

When processing speed is challenging, a learner might:

• Perform better when given time to think rather than being expected to answer immediately. The person may begin feeling stressed and overwhelmed when they feel they don’t have enough time to process the information.
• Know an answer but need additional time to respond.
• Take longer to complete assignments even when they understand the material.
• Have difficulty keeping up with rapidly presented instructions.
• Feel overwhelmed when too much information is given at once.
• Need extra time to transition from hearing a direction to acting on it.

Sometimes we interpret a delayed response as a lack of understanding or even as disobedience. We repeat the question, rephrase it, give another instruction, or answer for the person. What they may have needed was simply a little more time to process the original information. This challenge requires a patient teacher or parent to wait and give the student or child time to take the information in, interpret it, and then respond to it. We need to be careful to not assume their ability to understand is congruent with the speed at which they process the information.

Visual Processing

The ability to perceive, analyze, and compare images by seeing the differences in size, color, shape, distance, and orientation of objects. It is important to know that someone may have 20/20 vision and have visual processing difficulty. Visual processing isn’t just how we see the information; it is how our brain takes in and processes what we see.

When visual processing is a challenge a learner might:

• Lose their place when looking at a busy worksheet or frequently when reading.
• Have difficulty finding an item among many objects. I.E., finding a specific Lego piece in a bin of similar pieces.
• Struggle to notice differences between similar shapes, letters, or patterns.
• Have difficulty copying information accurately.
• Find visually cluttered pages or spaces overwhelming.
• Have difficulty remembering something they just saw. This can also be linked to memory.

Within Equipping Minds, we utilize the power of visualizing and creating images or movies in your mind.

Auditory Processing

Auditory processing involves how the brain interprets and makes sense of information we hear. This can include distinguishing between sounds, remembering and sequencing auditory information, and identifying important auditory information when other sounds are present. In language and reading, auditory skills are involved in phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize and work with the individual sounds in spoken words.

Like visual processing, auditory processing is not simply about whether someone can hear. A person may have normal hearing but still find it difficult to efficiently interpret or organize auditory information.

When auditory processing is a challenge a learner might:

• Frequently asks for verbal directions to be repeated.
• Difficulty following multi-step spoken directions.
• Struggle to distinguish between similar speech sounds. This can make phonemic-awareness tasks—such as identifying, separating, or manipulating the sounds within words—more challenging.
• Having difficulty remembering information presented only verbally.
• Finding it much harder to understand someone in a noisy room.
• Consistently ask what was just said.

Processing Skills Work Together

Processing speed, visual processing, and auditory processing aren’t three completely separate boxes.

Imagine a teacher says: “Turn to page 32, look at the diagram at the top, and circle the three things that don’t belong.”

That seemingly simple instruction requires several cognitive skills. The learner needs to hear and process the instruction, hold the information in working memory, visually locate page 32 and the correct diagram, maintain attention, compare the images, reason about which items don’t belong, and then respond.

If the student doesn’t complete the task, saying “They weren’t listening” tells us almost nothing about where the difficulty occurred! The behaviors and struggles we see can sometimes involve several cognitive processes working together.

My own precious son experienced many challenges with processing, and that experience changed the way I looked at some behaviors. As parents and teachers, it can be easy to assume someone isn’t listening, isn’t trying, or is simply being defiant or lazy. But sometimes a learner may actually be working extremely hard while finding certain cognitive processes challenging.

When we begin looking beneath the behavior, we can respond with greater understanding and find more appropriate ways to support the learner.

How can we Support Someone with Processing Difficulties?

• Allow adequate processing time. Don’t immediately repeat or rephrase a question when the learner doesn’t respond. Give them time.
• Break lengthy instructions into smaller steps.
• Pair spoken information with visual supports when helpful.
• Reduce unnecessary visual or auditory distractions.
• Check for understanding instead of assuming silence or a delayed response means the learner doesn’t know.

Providing support doesn’t necessarily mean lowering expectations. Sometimes it means changing how information is presented or allowing additional time so the learner has a better opportunity to demonstrate what they understand.

Equipping Minds Program

Processing doesn’t happen in isolation. Attention, memory, logic and reasoning, comprehension, executive functioning, and processing all interact with how we take in, understand, and respond to information. This is one reason I value the holistic approach of the Equipping Minds program. Rather than looking at processing as one isolated skill, we can consider how multiple cognitive skills are working together and where a learner may need additional support.

How Does Equipping Minds Work With Processing?

Through engaging, interactive activities, Equipping Minds provides opportunities for learners to practice cognitive skills involved in observing, listening, remembering, visualizing, comparing, categorizing, reasoning, and responding.

Visualization is one strategy used within the program. Learners may practice creating mental images or “movies” from information they hear or read, providing another way to engage with and organize information.

The activities can also be individualized to the learner. The goal isn’t to expect every person to process information in exactly the same way or at the same speed, but to appropriately challenge cognitive skills while meeting the learner where they are.