Can Color Blindness Affect Learning?

School teachers, parents, and society should be educated about congenital color vision deficiency to improve their learning environment.

Students with congenital color vision deficiency have emotional problems and poor academic performance found researchers at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Congenital color vision deficiency, also known as congenital color blindness is an incurable and non-progressive impairment that puts the affected person at a distinct disadvantage when performing specific visual tasks.

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‘The majority of color-blind children in lower-level classes have poor academic performance.’

Students are found to learn something better when exposed to visual stimuli, such as bright colors. Colors in teaching materials improve classroom learning efficiency, allowing information to be conveyed more quickly and effectively.

Educators are becoming increasingly reliant on online educational resources. As a result, a lot of important information may be difficult to convey to color-deficient students.

To explore more, researchers conducted a study involving primary and secondary school color-deficient students in Malaysia aged seven to 17 on their academic performance and emotional well-being.

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They found that color-deficient students are slower to follow instructions and appear hesitant when faced with color-related decisions. They also struggle in school subjects such as chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and natural sciences in general.

In addition, primary school students (aged seven to 12) with congenital color vision deficiency are found to be very sensitive, prefer to be alone, and have short attention spans.

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Meanwhile, secondary school students (aged 13 to 17) with color vision deficiency are found to have internalizing behavior problems, low self-confidence, lack of class participation, and inability to concentrate.

Students with congenital color vision deficiency are embarrassed when they fail to identify colors correctly, which leads to them being misunderstood as slow learners and ridiculed by teachers and peers. This makes for a challenging educational and learning environment for them.

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If color-deficient symptoms in children are recognized by parents and teachers, they can be treated easily. The most common symptoms are difficulty in distinguishing and identifying colors, inability to concentrate for long periods, particularly when coloring, taking a long time to complete a color-related assignment, making a mistake while coloring, and frequently selecting food.

For this vision screening in schools should become mandatory in most countries, including Malaysia. In addition, screening tests to detect color vision deficiency are less suitable for children who have just started school.

In addressing the issue, researchers developed an easy-to-understand color deficiency screening test that can be used on pre-school students.

Teachers can administer the test in schools, and a color vision screening training module has been developed for this purpose.

Despite their small numbers, color deficient children also have the right to an education and a balanced well-being.

Source-Medindia