The perceptual speed of children and older adults is frequently slow enough to cause problems in understanding language.
For speech, if the perceptual processes are too slow, the listener may not partially or fully comprehend what was said. You see this with three year old children all the time.
An adult may ask a child to do something, like bring the doll, and become frustrated when the child fails to respond. The adult might even walk away, and miss the child‰s response that comes late when the perceptual process is finally completed.
You may have experienced this in the Figure-Ground and Closure tasks presented in the Notes.
It may have taken you minutes to see the Old or Young Lady (reversible figure ground tasks), or the bearded face (closure).
Hence, if the perceptual process is too slow, language, speech development and/or the ability to engage in verbal conversations may be seriously impaired. What makes it worse is that the cause of the problem is not so readily recognizable.
It‰s usually clear when someone has a visual or hearing impairment (transduction), but few people recognize or understand perception problems.