Key Features of Pattern Recognition

Key features of Pattern Recognition include the ability to identify and classify:

  • What is it that I am seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting?
  • What goes with it?
  • What do I do with the information?
  • What comes next?
Puzzle peices with the pattrn recognition key feature questions of them
Student working on a consturction project looking a the directions.
student on platform swing looking at cube shaped puzzle pieces

Pattern Recognition can be problematic for children with Sensory Processing Disorders

This type of problem solving can be problematic for the child with SPD in that pattern recognition typically involves integrating sensory systems.  For example, reading incorporates decoding visual images, coordinating eye muscles, and integrating these inputs with sounds of language.  Handwriting combines appreciation of hand and finger positioning with visual images of each letter to be formed. Dressing involves appreciation of features of each garment and formulating a plan of how to get the garment onto the body.  In this way, we can see that pattern recognition can serve to open portals of independence for children with SPD. 

Key intellectual features and executive functions also include:

Two young boys playing in the pond

Pattern Recognition: What You Can do To Help

Use of developmentally appropriate sized manipulatives beginning with large through medium and then to small sized pieces can be helpful.  Incorporating use of gross motor equipment  during play with manipulative toys helps to improve integration of vision and body awareness with language skills.  This form of enhanced play stimulates the body as a whole, thereby reinforcing  attention and memory.

Student building a truck using a task card
Student building a truck using a picture on a tablet for guidance

Remember to prompt for:

What is it? ●  Where does it go? ●   What comes next?

 

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