Myomancy ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism

We know that visual noise is harder for dyslexics to cope with than non-dyslexics. Now a new study looks at learning and visual noise. Participants were trained on a visual orientaton task with either a clear display or a noisy display.

Clear and Noisy Displays
They then were swapped so those trained on the clear display used the noisy one and vice versa. The clear-to-noisy participants continued to improve despite the visual noise but those going from noisy-to-clear improved less. The researchers speculate that by learning in a clear environment the brain directly improves the underlying skills required. Where as in a noisy environment the noise acts as a handicap, limiting the brains potential for improvement. When placed in the clear environment the handicap is carried over because the underlying skills haven’t been improved as much. This suggests that learning should take place in a simple environment even if this doesn’t reflect how the skills will be learnt in real life.
For example, learning to drive. Even if you start learning on a quiet road there are still curbs, signs, trees and parked cars to deal with whilst you learn to master the accelerator, brake and steering. If instead you learnt the basics in a huge, completely empty car-park, then when you go on the road, you will be better at handling the controls than if you had spent the same amount of time learning on the road.
This suggests that even though we expect children to be able to read and work in a noisy classroom environments, the learning of key reading skills should take place in the quietest, simplest environment possible,

Full Text: Perceptual learning in clear displays optimizes perceptual expertise: Learning the limiting process
Coverage on the University of Southern California web site