Anyone Know About Visual-Spatial Learning Disabilities?
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 10:17 pm
Okay, here's the deal. When I was in grade 12 (1999), my tiny small town school was told by the school board that they needed to "identify gifted children." So they picked a couple of kids in each grade and sent them to the school district's psychologist for testing. I was one of them. And they found that my IQ was above the limit of the IQ test, which was something like 168. HOWEVER, they also found that my spatial reasoning skills were VERY low, something on the order of the 10th percentile. And this was all presented as, "This is interesting. Your spatial reasoning skills are so poor that you technically have a visual-spatial learning disability, but your IQ is so high that it seems you have figured out how to compensate for it. Huh." And I never thought too much about it, but it's always kind of been in the back of my mind.
So then on Friday last week I was sitting in class, and we're talking about child development right now, and they talked about learning disabilities. And the focus was mostly on the more common things like dyslexia, but visual-spatial learning disabilities were kind of mentioned in passing. And then I had this epiphany. One of my huge sources of frustration at the moment is that I'm trying to learn how to drive. I'm 30 and I've been trying to learn to drive since I was 24. And I just can't do it. I can make the car go and stuff, but it's the whole sense of where I am wrt other cars and when to start turning and how to change lanes and trip planning and when to start stopping and all of these things that involve SPATIAL REASONING that I just can't do. And on Friday I was sitting there thinking, "Hey, I have this learning disability - maybe that's why I am having such a hard time learning to drive!"
So I did a bit of googling, and sure enough, driving is one of the problems for people with visual-spatial learning disabilities. And, just in case you are interested, other problems include telling left from right, reading maps, getting lost in places you've been a million times, not recognizing cars and buildings you've seen a million times, visualizing things in 3 dimensions, walking into things, learning to ride a bike, etc - and I've had problems with all of those things! But I found ways around them. Seriously, I couldn't ride a bike until I was 12. I used to get yelled at all the time for walking into walls and stuff - like I was doing it on purpose and yelling at me would make me stop walking into the wall! And lots of concepts in physics were really hard for me - I thought I was just lazy and/or stupid, because people would say things to me like, "You're so smart. I don't know why you don't get this. You just need to work harder." So I'm having this epiphany like, this explains everything, and I never was lazy and stupid because some things were so hard for me to learn, and actually it's probably quite impressive that I've managed to do some of the things I've done. Oh, and I also found an article about medical students with visual-spatial learning disabilities not doing well in anatomy - may explain why I get 90s on pretty much everything else and really good clinical evaluations, but I've actually failed two anatomy tests. I don't just have selective laziness/stupidity when it comes to anatomy or vectors or driving - I have a freaking learning disability. It's all kind of shocking but very validating at the same time.
So anyway, driving. I really think this is why I'm having such a hard time driving, and now I'm a bit more hopeful because maybe I can do something about it. Seriously, I've taken the full driver's ed course, plus additional lessons with two different instructors, and they all just get frustrated with me because they know that I'm "really smart" and I have graduate degrees and I'm in medical school and they don't understand why I can't figure out which shoulder to look over before I turn left or right or change lanes. So one thing I'm going to do is tell the next driving instructor that I have this learning disability.
But I would like more information, and that's what I'm wanting to ask about here. I can't find a lot of information on the internet about visual-spatial learning disabilities. Everything I have found is in the context of non-verbal learning disabilities (NLD), which is apparently on a spectrum with Asperger's syndrome and includes all of these other issues that I don't have. I don't have issues with not understanding social cues (I'm actually probably better than the general population at social cues and figuring people out), but the focus of all of these NLD things is mostly the other things and that's useless to me. I have an isolated spatial reasoning defect. I don't have some big thing that's on a spectrum with Asperger's syndrome. What I would really like to do is buy a book about visual-spatial learning disabilities, but my internet searching skills have not found one. If there isn't a book, even a website that's specifically about the visual-spatial stuff and not the rest of the NLD stuff. I am gathering that visual-spatial learning disabilities are not that common, especially not as isolated things that don't coexist with problems understanding non-verbal social cues. But if there is any info out there, I would like to have it. I would like to understand my issue a bit better, I would REALLY like to know if there are any suggestions for how to learn to drive with this, and I would also kind of like to have something I can show to driving instructors (or anyone who needs to know about it for any future issues I might encounter) so that they can understand what my problem is and be patient with me while I'm trying to learn.
Do any of you have any ideas? I know some of you are into education and psychology and most of us one here are repositories of all kinds of random information, so I thought this might be my best bet to maybe find some info. Seriously, if you can point me to a book about just visual-spatial learning disabilities, you will be my hero forever. I have come to the end of the internet in my search efforts.
So then on Friday last week I was sitting in class, and we're talking about child development right now, and they talked about learning disabilities. And the focus was mostly on the more common things like dyslexia, but visual-spatial learning disabilities were kind of mentioned in passing. And then I had this epiphany. One of my huge sources of frustration at the moment is that I'm trying to learn how to drive. I'm 30 and I've been trying to learn to drive since I was 24. And I just can't do it. I can make the car go and stuff, but it's the whole sense of where I am wrt other cars and when to start turning and how to change lanes and trip planning and when to start stopping and all of these things that involve SPATIAL REASONING that I just can't do. And on Friday I was sitting there thinking, "Hey, I have this learning disability - maybe that's why I am having such a hard time learning to drive!"
So I did a bit of googling, and sure enough, driving is one of the problems for people with visual-spatial learning disabilities. And, just in case you are interested, other problems include telling left from right, reading maps, getting lost in places you've been a million times, not recognizing cars and buildings you've seen a million times, visualizing things in 3 dimensions, walking into things, learning to ride a bike, etc - and I've had problems with all of those things! But I found ways around them. Seriously, I couldn't ride a bike until I was 12. I used to get yelled at all the time for walking into walls and stuff - like I was doing it on purpose and yelling at me would make me stop walking into the wall! And lots of concepts in physics were really hard for me - I thought I was just lazy and/or stupid, because people would say things to me like, "You're so smart. I don't know why you don't get this. You just need to work harder." So I'm having this epiphany like, this explains everything, and I never was lazy and stupid because some things were so hard for me to learn, and actually it's probably quite impressive that I've managed to do some of the things I've done. Oh, and I also found an article about medical students with visual-spatial learning disabilities not doing well in anatomy - may explain why I get 90s on pretty much everything else and really good clinical evaluations, but I've actually failed two anatomy tests. I don't just have selective laziness/stupidity when it comes to anatomy or vectors or driving - I have a freaking learning disability. It's all kind of shocking but very validating at the same time.
So anyway, driving. I really think this is why I'm having such a hard time driving, and now I'm a bit more hopeful because maybe I can do something about it. Seriously, I've taken the full driver's ed course, plus additional lessons with two different instructors, and they all just get frustrated with me because they know that I'm "really smart" and I have graduate degrees and I'm in medical school and they don't understand why I can't figure out which shoulder to look over before I turn left or right or change lanes. So one thing I'm going to do is tell the next driving instructor that I have this learning disability.
But I would like more information, and that's what I'm wanting to ask about here. I can't find a lot of information on the internet about visual-spatial learning disabilities. Everything I have found is in the context of non-verbal learning disabilities (NLD), which is apparently on a spectrum with Asperger's syndrome and includes all of these other issues that I don't have. I don't have issues with not understanding social cues (I'm actually probably better than the general population at social cues and figuring people out), but the focus of all of these NLD things is mostly the other things and that's useless to me. I have an isolated spatial reasoning defect. I don't have some big thing that's on a spectrum with Asperger's syndrome. What I would really like to do is buy a book about visual-spatial learning disabilities, but my internet searching skills have not found one. If there isn't a book, even a website that's specifically about the visual-spatial stuff and not the rest of the NLD stuff. I am gathering that visual-spatial learning disabilities are not that common, especially not as isolated things that don't coexist with problems understanding non-verbal social cues. But if there is any info out there, I would like to have it. I would like to understand my issue a bit better, I would REALLY like to know if there are any suggestions for how to learn to drive with this, and I would also kind of like to have something I can show to driving instructors (or anyone who needs to know about it for any future issues I might encounter) so that they can understand what my problem is and be patient with me while I'm trying to learn.
Do any of you have any ideas? I know some of you are into education and psychology and most of us one here are repositories of all kinds of random information, so I thought this might be my best bet to maybe find some info. Seriously, if you can point me to a book about just visual-spatial learning disabilities, you will be my hero forever. I have come to the end of the internet in my search efforts.