Web-Based Radio Show Visual Spatial Thinking Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. April 2, 2008
Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Today we are going to talk about a topic I get lots of questions about because it is not as well known as other topics. We have talked about this before, but we are going to amplify it a little bit today, and that is how a child makes sense of what they see and what might be technically called the visual spatial world because what you see operates out in physical space. You judge distance like when you are driving a car - making sure you are not hitting another car, or if you are throwing or catching a ball, you have to judge where the ball is going. That is all using your eyes and coordinating that with your hands and legs and other movement patterns in physical space – in other words, in the space around you. That is why we technically call it visual spatial, but it is really making sense of the world that you see, just like we make sense of the world we hear. So we have a language for speaking and we also have, in a sense, a language for seeing. So this is visual spatial thinking or the visual spatial language. We discussed this before when we talked about learning and when we talked about the unique biologies of children with autistic spectrum disorders and the approach we take to them – our comprehensive approach, the “I” part of the DIR® Model – the individual differences, as well as the differences in visual spatial thinking or how children comprehend what they see. What I am going to focus on today is how we work with children to improve their visual spatial thinking or making sense of what they see in terms of our DIR® Floortime Model. We have talked before about the pioneering work of Harry Wachs and his collaboration with Hans Furth and his book, Thinking Goes To School, and you have heard presentations by Dr. Wachs and Serena Wieder, my dear colleague, at meetings on visual spatial thinking and ways of conceptualizing them. What I want to make explicit today is how we combine a variety of visual spatial exercises developed by Furth and Wachs and recently expanded and systematized by 4938 Hampden Lane • Suite 800 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • 301 656-2667 www.icdl.com
Harry Wachs, that goes beyond even his book Thinking Goes To School and will be out as a part of a new manual and how we combine that with our DIR® Floortime approach. The basic idea is that as you work on visual spatial thinking, or making sense of what you see, just like when you are learning a language or any particular motor skill, we want to be harnessing all of the child’s functional emotional developmental capacities, that is, the child’s ability to attend, engage, interact, enter into the shared social problem solving, use ideas creatively, and use ideas logically, and then use ideas more abstractly at the same time. We want to work on these fundamentals or these building blocks of healthy development – engagement, two-way communication, etc. – simultaneously so we are always working at multiple levels or multiple things at the same time. So it is not just simply a structured exercise, but we are teaching the child to use their abilities to make sense out of what they see while at the same time relating with others and interacting with others because that is the way you use vision in the real world; that is the way you make sense of what you see in the real world. You don’t just do it by taking a visual test as you might at an optometrist or ophthalmologist’s office, you are interacting with others. You are driving a car, you are throwing and catching a ball, you are solving a math problem, or you are doing a puzzle. So you are always doing it in a dynamic, interactive, relationship-based context. That is why it is important to teach children to make sense out of what they see in the same context. Now we can only include those functional emotional developmental capacities, which is a technical term for talking about engagement, two-way communication, and shared social problem solving, etc., we can only make sense of our world and do this up to the highest level the child has already achieved. So a child who is not yet verbal, we can’t really use creative thinking and logical thinking until we forge those new territories. Then we can help the child master their visual spatial capacities in relationship to creative thinking and logical thinking and eventually multi-causal thinking where the child gives you many reasons for something, and eventually even gray area thinking where they give you the subtleties and eventually even reflective thinking. But initially, we can go up to the highest level the child is capable of and harness all of those while we are working on the visual spatial capacities. The question is, and the real question for therapists and parents working on visual spatial skills, and I won’t review all of those because they are available in the new manual – the exercises, that is – but I’m going to give you examples of how to combine work on visual spatial thinking with all of our basic functional emotional milestones; all our basic capacities. So that is what we are going to focus on today.
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Now let’s begin with one of the beginning exercises for visual spatial thinking, which is our Evolution Game because children have to be able to move their bodies in space in a coordinated way and as you recall, in our Evolution Game, we start with slithering movements like a little worm or snake, and go up to crawling where we use our arms and legs in a coordinated way, to walking, to running, to climbing, hopping, skipping, throwing, catching, and a variety of motor skills. We might do things like the wheelbarrow walk where we are holding the child’s legs as they propel themselves on their elbows or hands. All of this is to help the body coordinate itself in space. Now let’s take an example of how we combine that with our functional emotional developmental capacities. We could just show the child what to do and stand there silently as the child tries to copy what we do if it is a verbal child. Or if the child is nonverbal who can imitate, we can show and then stand there and see if the child does it like slithering like a worm. Or, what I recommend alternatively, which would harness our functional emotional developmental capacities at the same time, let’s say we are doing a slithering worm game, we would slither with the child. Or we might have the child slither over to us as we are holding something the child wants, inviting the child enticingly with our voice and our gleaming eyes and the object of his or her desire, like it might be a necklace or it might be a cookie or it might be a toy that they want. But they may need to slither through a small space like one of these little circular tunnels that kids love to go through where the only way to go through it is to slither through it, so they have to slither. So we start by making rhythmic movements together and here the word rhythm is important. We may be slithering worms together, we may be in a slithering race, and while we are doing this, we are engaging with the child too – we are making eye contact, we are giggling together or smiling together hopefully, and as much as possible, we move from the rhythmic togetherness into back-and-forth interaction where, as the child slithers to us we may move to the left or right. “Over here!” or “Over here!” or move the object of desire behind us so the child has to slither behind us and we are getting back-and-forth interaction. We may vocalize, “Is this what you want?” and hopefully the child will vocalize something back or shake their head yes or no and get back-and-forth two-way communication. If we hide it in our shirt or behind us, we might get shared social problem solving all as part of the slithering game. If the child is verbal, we may play dumb. “What do you want?” and see if the child can describe what it is that they want. If you get creative, we may say, “Well, is it a worm? Or is it a gobbley goop from the moon that is trying to get my cookie or get my
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toy?” and see if the child can be inventive. We may ask the child were it is once we hide it, if the child can connect ideas together. If the child is quite verbal and capable of causal thinking, we may ask the child, after the game is over and they have gotten their object and we have slithered together, what they thought of that. Did they like it or not? How they felt about it? If the child is a multi-causal thinker, we may ask them to give us a bunch of feelings. How else did they feel about it? If the child can do gray area thinking, we can ask, “How exciting was it?” or “How frustrating was it – a little bit, a lot, a whole lot?” And if the child is already reflective and can reflect on their feelings, ask them how they felt and how this compares to how they usually feel. Was it more exciting or less exciting than they usually find playing? Or was it boring or more boring? They can reflect on their feelings. So we can have them evaluate the exercise they have just been through. Now what we have done is we have taken them through the whole gamut of our levels of functional emotional capacities, all while playing a slithering game. Now we can do the same thing when we are crawling, or when we are walking, or when we are running, or when we are hopping, or when we are climbing, or when we are going through an obstacle course. Or let’s say we are getting to more advanced “making sense of what we see in relationships to our bodies” type games, where we are having the child try to roll a ball to hit a moving target or try to get something from us as we are moving and they have to coordinate their moving body with our moving body. That will be the exercise with the game, and in the Harry Wachs manual, we’ll see lots of games like this, doing all of these things that we just described for slithering as the child is intercepting us. So we may do some rhythmic activity together – have the child move the same way that we move or see if they can pace themselves – oops you are moving too fast, too slow. See if the child can giggle and laugh and look at us with gleaming eyes as we are having enticing objects in our hand as we are moving and the child is trying to catch us or find us. Now we get back-and-forth communication going if we are putting it on top of our heads and say, “Where is it? Do you want it? Do you want it?” and the child responds with verbal communication. Then we put it down lower. Then we have shared social problem solving if the child is searching for it as we are moving – they have to catch us and search for it. Then having the child use his or her words, “What do you want? What do you want me to do? Shall I stop? Should I go? Should I go faster or slower?” and the child can use verbal descriptions. Or you can have him or her tell you what kind of a pretend animal they are going to be and what kind of pretend animal you are going to be. The child can get creative as we are trying to do this moving body game. Then we can ask the child how they feel about it, you can get into 4938 Hampden Lane • Suite 800 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • 301 656-2667 www.icdl.com
multiple feelings, gray area feelings, how much, and then more reflective – how this compares to other things they have done, what they think about this overall game, etc., etc. So that is how we use some of our functional emotional capacities together with some of the exercises that will promote, in particular, the visual spatial parts of the child’s mind. It is very, very important to do these things together, again because that is how the child uses it in the real world. That is the best way for the child to practice making sense of their visual spatial world. So we always want to work on the functional emotional milestones simultaneously with their child’s focus on vision. I’m going to give some more examples in just a minute. Let me give you some more examples from other types of visual spatial or making sense of what we see type exercises. Let’s say we are working on the child not just connecting their moving body to other people’s moving bodies, but let’s say a tracking exercise, which is similar but where you have a moving circular object on a string and the child has to try to put a pencil in the object while they are needing to track, something I use for reading and other types of skills. Again, this could be an exercise where if it is a verbal child, tell them what to do and you are quiet and you would tell them if they did it or not and give them minimal feedback, or you can be dangling that moving object where you are moving with your hand back-and-forth and challenging the child with your emotions to move with you rhythmically, you could say, “I bet you can’t move with me” or “Let’s see if we can do this to music” where the child moves left and right and you make it like a dance and they are moving the pencil into the moving object and you start slowly and then you go faster and then you go slower again and then you go still slower and then you go still slower and then you go faster, faster, and faster so they are having to move rhythmically with you. Then you try to make it back-and-forth, all the time engaging the child with “You got it, no you didn’t, oops I’m outsmarting you” and try to get gleaming eyes and smiling faces. You are getting back-and-forth interaction where the child is vocalizing with sounds or with words success or lack of success in getting that pencil into the hole, but we it is back-and-forth because you are doing the unexpected. The child is expecting you to move rhythmically left and right and the child expects you to move left and you move right, and you say, “Oh, where did I go? I’m over here” and the child has to show where you are and point. Then you ask the child if he can get his pencil from here? And then you move and ask if he can get it from there. You let the child succeed 70-80% of the time, but the child is doing it in more of a backand-forth way rather than in a rhythmical way, and then you move up the ladder where the child has to find the circle and move the pencil there. You move it behind you, you 4938 Hampden Lane • Suite 800 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • 301 656-2667 www.icdl.com
put it to the side of you, the child has to go around you to find it as you are moving it and put the pencil in the hole and you count it. Once the child gets to five, they win and they win a prize. Then you go into where it gets more creative and you say, “Let’s pretend. What are we doing here? What should we pretend this little hole is? Maybe the hole is the key to the magic kingdom.” When the child puts the pencil in, they get into the castle. “Oh, that is the lock and this is the key” but the child should come up with the creative imagination and then get logical again. Have the child answer the question, how do you feel about this? Do you like this or not like it? How much do you like it? Use gray area thinking. How does this compare to the playing worms together? Use comparative thinking. Then get reflective thinking – well, how do you feel about this compared to going to school and what are these feelings like compared to other feelings you have during the day? See how reflective the child can be. So again, we go up our functional emotional developmental capacities, even when we are doing a simple tracking game. Everything becomes part of engagement and interaction and shared social problem solving, and as much verbalization, creative thinking, and reflective thinking as the child is capable of – up to the highest level the child is able to do. Let’s take another example of a higher level visual spatial task – a conservation exercise. Here is where we are helping a child master the concept that, let’s say a piece of clay that is long and thin may be the same amount of clay as the piece of clay which is wrapped into a tight little ball. We are helping the child realize that the quantity of the clay is the same even though they look different. Or that a tall stack of blocks may be the same as the same blocks lined up in a train. This is a more complicated visual spatial exercise and it involves real thinking. That will be important in math and understanding graphs and it is technically called “conservation.” How do we turn an exercise such as this into our different levels? Well, we can have the magic train and the magic tower. As we talk about the magic train and the magic tower, we will have the child lay it out and ask, “How many blocks do you want to make in your train and how many blocks in your tower?” Let’s say the child makes the tower a little taller with 5 or 6 and the train with only 4. We can say, “I’m going to take one of these off here and may I put one down here on the train so you make them equal?” As you are engaging the child in this way and getting back-and-forth communication and interaction going, and getting some problem solving going as your child is helping you construct the tower and the train – you aren’t just doing it – you then get creative and you 4938 Hampden Lane • Suite 800 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • 301 656-2667 www.icdl.com
say, “OK, which one has more magical power – the one that is the train or the tower?” Let’s say the child picks the tower. You give the child a rule – you get logical. You say, “Well, the rule is that the one that is bigger and the one that (and this could also be with clay) has more, has more magical powers, so which one do you think now has more magical powers? The one that has more clay or the one that is bigger – the train or the tower?” and see if the child says, “Well, they both have the same because they both have 6 blocks” or “It is the same amount of clay.” Or, did the child make an error. If the child makes an error, you do an experiment with the child where they can use their logical thinking. You say, “Well, let’s test whether it is. How are we going to figure out whether the tower or the train is bigger?” See if the child can figure out to take the tower down and lay it next to the train and compare it or count the blocks. If the child isn’t ready to do that yet, you could offer multiple choice suggestions. You could say, “There are three ways I could think of, which way do you think is the best?” and give the good one first like laying them side-by-side or counting, and give them two silly ones second like “We can close our eyes and see if all of a sudden the answer will flash before our eyes.” Then have the child experiment. It is very important to have the child be active. As we are doing this, we are very interactive and very engaged and very verbally amplifying what we are doing and then we ask the verbal child again how the child feels about what they just did. Did they have many different feelings? How intense are they? How strong? How do they compare with other feelings? Then be reflective. How do these feelings compare to how they usually feel? So we go up the ladder even when while we are doing a conservation exercise, which is a high level exercise. We usually don’t get into some of these higher level visual spatial thinking exercises like conservation until the child fairly verbal and fairly logical. The Evolution Game with slithering snakes we can do even before the child is verbal, or helping the child get into shared social problem solving with moving bodies. We can do this even before the child is very verbal. Some of these things we can do early on and other things we have to do once the child is more of a verbal, logical thinker. What we especially want to do is help them develop their visual spatial thinking. In just a moment, I will share with you one other example before we conclude today. Let’s take just one more example. One of the more advanced exercises in visual spatial thinking is where the child is asked to not only copy different block designs, but like a junior architect, be able to figure out how the block designs would look from different perspectives – turning a block design on its side, rotating it – in other words doing different visual spatial tricks that aren’t really tricks, they just show flexibility of making sense out of what you see. In other words, can you change what you see in your 4938 Hampden Lane • Suite 800 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • 301 656-2667 www.icdl.com
mind by forming an image of it and literally transforming it into something that is a close cousin of it, like rotating it on its side or figuring out what the mirror image would look like. It is kind of like looking at a house, looking at the side, the front, the back, and figuring out how the whole house would look together. Then figuring out in your mind what would happen if you shifted it around and put the kitchen where the living room was or the living room where the kitchen was or you turned it upside down or put it on its side – how would it look? So you are kind of playing with different visual images in your mind. Later on, this can even get more creative in the visual spatial thinking arena and create your own designs and then create different variations on them – for houses, for whole cities, for cars – and this makes for more advanced visual spatial thinking. This forms our healthy foundation for mathematical reasoning. Often advanced math involves spatial concepts. Einstein is well known for having talked about being able to picture things and playing mind games with himself where he imagines he was in outer space – that is how he figured out some of his concepts, by being able to visually picture what would happen as you changed time or played with different relationships between time and space in the larger world. Even as we are doing these more advanced tasks, again we can engage the child at all of their levels so it is not just an instructional relationship but we may do some things together to warm up in a rhythmical way and then engage the child to entice the child’s fascination. “I’ll bet you can’t copy this. Let’s see how fast you can do it. I bet I can copy you faster than you can copy me” and make it interactive. Just play simple backand-forth games with block designs. Then when you are more advanced, you can challenge the child to rotate the design on its side or come up with some creative new design if you are more advanced than the rotation of the blocks. If the child doesn’t do it, then say, “Oh, how about this one?” and go to simpler ones so the child experiences a sense of mastery quickly. Then you can challenge the child to come up with one that you have to do. You make it more of a back-and-forth game. If the child has a hard time doing it, experiment. Say, “Have you tried it all the ways possible?” if the child is trying to copy a design or do a rotation. “Are there any other possibilities? You do one and I’ll try it” and you kind of demonstrate to the child but not tell the child how to do his by what you do. Then see if the child can do it back to you. In that way, you are making it a back-and-forth interaction and a creative enterprise at the same time. You could also say, “What could we imagine this design is? Is this going to be a castle, or is this going to be a fort, or is this going to be a new city on a make-believe 4938 Hampden Lane • Suite 800 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • 301 656-2667 www.icdl.com
planet? What is this going to be? What should we make it? Then we can go back into our “How did you feel about it? What other feelings do you have? How strong are these feelings?” for gray area thinking. Then have the child reflect – how did this compare to other things you do, and how the child thinks of this overall set of exercises. In that way you are engaging the child in all their levels from simple rhythmic interactions together and strong engagement, always up to reflective thinking, even while you are transforming block designs in space or copying and changing block designs and then playing little mind games. As you get to more advanced and creative work where the child is creating their own designs or drawing new designs showing you they are a great artist or a great junior architect and future great mathematician, the same thing holds. We want to mobilize all the functional emotional developmental capacities at the same time: shared attention and rhythmic activity together; lots of engagement, lots of back-and-forth interaction, and lots of problem solving together so it is social problem solving, and lots of creative and then logical thinking as we are doing this, and then multi-causal thinking where the child can give you many reasons. Then gray area thinking where the child is sharing with you the degrees of things, and then the child’s reflection on the whole enterprise. So as we do all of this, we are mobilizing the child. Now as you look at the exercises in the new manual that Harry Wachs has developed and that build on exercises developed by Furth and Wachs, you want to be thinking about how I help my child master these to strengthen their ability to make sense out of what they see – think about seeing or think with what they see, not just what they hear or say, which incidentally relates often as we think about it now to the right side of the brain even right side of the brain, although we are learning that neither the left or right operate solely in the ways we formerly thought, but there is a predominance of the right side with visual spatial activity for most people. As we are developing these mental capacities, we are also developing all of the other capacities, particularly our functional developmental capacities having to do with levels of thinking and levels of social and emotional development in the ways I have just described. Now the other general principle as you are doing this, and I haven’t even mentioned this, not to complicate the agenda, but I just want you to be aware of it in conclusion, that while you are doing this, you are also mobilizing all the child’s other senses – not just what they see because you are talking, so you engaging the child in auditory processing and language, you are doing stuff so the motor system is involved, you are talking loud or soft so the ability for the child to modulate what they hear, maybe you are touching objects together so touch is involved, probably smelling and eating is 4938 Hampden Lane • Suite 800 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • 301 656-2667 www.icdl.com
not involved in this enterprise unless you are doing it over lunch or over a snack. But you are mobilizing all of the child’s senses as well as their different levels of thinking and social and emotional development while focusing on their visual spatial world or their ability to make sense out of what they see. That is why we recommend harnessing all the functional emotional developmental capacities. Now at other times we have discussed how each of these visual spatial capacities for which there are exercises described in the new manual relate to and can be thought of as part of our functional emotional developmental capacities. These we have described before and are available. Well thank you for joining us. Next time we will have another interesting new topic and this one for labeling purposes, we will talk about using the functional emotional developmental capacities while learning to make sense out of what we see.
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