VT Works

If there’s one activity that tends to bend the minds of some therapists, it’s Vectograms.  Whether it’s understanding the differences in visual demand between targets (Quoits vs. Clown),  the counter-intuitive premise of  SILO, trying to understand how working distance affects the picture, or simply why some patients can only appreciate the depth if they’re standing on their head with one shoe removed, while waving their arms and whistling the theme to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Sounds fun, right?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Vectograms can be as challenging to administer as they are for patients to understand. The geometry involved, the opportunity for parallax, the visual responses versus the logical responses, the inherent accommodative demand, the three dimensional properties, the importance of fine tuning a patient’s localization, the building of central/peripheral integration, the absence or presence of feeling tone, the overall spatial awareness of the patient, and of course, where and when is the picture single.  As a therapist administering a vectogram on a patient, there’s a lot of points to cover usually in just a few short minutes.  Compounding the challenge might be a rambunctious 8 year old who would rather do anything, or be anywhere, besides the chair in your VT room.  Generally, they are not shy about letting us know it either.

Over the next few days I’ll be sharing my strategies on covering all the aforementioned points including questions to ask and not ask, ways to decrease or increase demand, how to ensure these new found skills transfer to real life, and of course, how to manage the patient who says “if you tell me what I’m supposed to see, I’ll tell you if I see it.”

Hint: You’re supposed to see a purple elephant.