Visual perceptual skills involve taking in visual information from the eye and how the brain makes sense of what the eyes see. This skill can impact all areas of everyday life. In children they may impact school skills such as handwriting, cutting, copying information from a board, reading, and math problems. They can also affect self-care skills such as clothing orientation, completing fasteners, cooking, and eating. They may also affect a child’s ability to engage in certain areas of play such as completing puzzles, playing board games, memory games, and block pattern construction. There are a few types of visual perception including visual attention, visual figure-ground, visual memory, visual discrimination, visual spatial, visual form constancy, and visual closure. Please see below a description of each type:
- Visual Attention: Focusing on visual information
- Visual Figure-Ground: Distinguishing an object against a background
- Visual Memory: Remembering what was seen including letters, words, or patterns
- Visual Discrimination: Distinguishing similarities and differences between visual information
- Visual Spatial: Orientation and placement of objects in relation to each other
- Visual Form Constancy: Recognition of the same object even when it has been turned in different directions or
- Visual Closure: Recognition of an object or image when a part of the image is missing
Problems if your child is having a problem with visual perception:
- Reversing letters of “b,d, p, q” and differentiating between them
- Challenges with directional terms of in, out, under, below, next to, up, and down
- Remembering left and right
- Losing their place while writing or reading
- Challenges with sequencing of remembering the ABCs in order
- May appear disorganized
Here some ideas to improve visual perception skills:
- Playing games like I spy or finding the difference
- Completing partial drawing pictures
- Dot-to-dot worksheets
- Completing mazes
- Playing with legos, duplos, or any building blocks
- Memory games
- Cross word puzzles
- Word searches
- Identifying plastic letters/numbers and identifying the letter by feeling it