Continued Early Childhood Education Phone: 866-727-1617


What are Visual Perceptual Skills?

Dena Bishop, OTR/L

August 13, 2018

Share:

Question

What are visual perceptual skills?

Answer

Visual perceptual skills are the brain's ability to make sense of what the eyes see. It is important for everyday activities such as dressing, eating, writing, and playing. There are seven different categories of visual perceptual skills. We will review each of these categories, as well as some visual perceptual activities that are helpful for children.

Visual Spatial Relations

Visual spatial relations is the ability to determine one form or part of a form that is turned in a different direction than the others. This is why some of our children have such a hard time recognizing b and d or p and q. They don't understand that just because it's rotated, it's a different letter. They also have difficulty differentiating between in and out, over and under, and left and right, because those are spatial skills concepts.

Sequential Memory 

Sequential memory is the ability to remember a series of forms and find it among other forms. If your child is having a hard time sequencing the alphabet, or copying from one place to another, this may be a problem with sequential memory. Sometimes, even with older elementary children, when they're copying sentences off the board, they will skip words. Or, when a child is copying sentences, they're copying one letter at a time. They're not seeing it as a whole word that they can write, but just each individual letter. This is a sequential memory problem.

Visual Discrimination

Visual discrimination is the ability to differentiate between objects and forms. This includes skills like being able to identify money and sort coins or other objects. If they're not able to discriminate the differences between or the similarities between objects or pictures, they're going to have a difficult time differentiating between n and m, b and d, and p and q.

Form Constancy

Form constancy is the ability to see a form and find it among other forms, although it is sized differently or rotated. Again, this is going to be a reason why some children will have trouble recognizing letters and numbers (e.g., recognizing that 6 and 9 are two different numbers).

Visual Memory

This is a little different than visual sequential memory. Visual memory is the ability to store visual details in short-term memory, such as recalling a phone number. Reading comprehension is going to be affected when visual memory is deficient. Think about showing a photograph to someone, and then taking it away and asking them questions about it. A child who has problems with visual memory will have difficulty remembering facts about the picture.

Visual Closure

Visual closure is the ability to fill in the missing details into an incomplete shape. This requires abstract problem-solving. A good example of this is working on puzzles; being able to put a picture together in your mind and piece it together correctly. This also will cause a problem with writing and spelling. With spelling, a child with visual closure deficits won't know the ends of the word or the middle of the word. For writing, a child with visual closure deficits will not be able to know if a word is complete.

Visual Figure Ground 

This is the ability to perceive a form and find it hidden in a conglomerated ground of matter. For example, ask a child to find the blue crayon in their pencil box. Visual figure ground is being able to filter out all the other crayons to look for that blue crayon. The adult equivalent of using visual figure ground skills would be when we are rummaging through our junk drawer to find something we need. Hidden picture activities are useful for children to work on their visual figure ground skills (e.g., Highlights books or Where's Waldo books).

Some examples of activities to encourage visual perceptual include:

  • Paper mazes and marble mazes
  • Connect the dot activities
  • Hidden pictures
  • Puzzles
  • Copying pictures or forms. You can start with various simple shapes, just copying, and then interlock shapes together on paper and have them copy that as well.
  • Wooden blocks
  • Patterning
  • Matching and sorting

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Foundational Skills and Activities for Handwriting, by Dena Bishop, OTR/L.


dena bishop

Dena Bishop, OTR/L

Dena Bishop, OTR/L is a veteran pediatric occupational therapist specializing in school-based therapy for students with multiple diagnoses including ASD, ADHD, CP, and DD. She earned her B.S degree in OT from the University of Pittsburgh in 2000. Her 17 years of experience have granted her significant knowledge from the vast number of therapists she has collaborated with and the resources she has collected and implemented over the years. Dena has spent her entire career engaging and empowering students from 18 months through 21 years of age with diverse cultures while working in schools in OH, PA, CA, HI, and FL. She has academia experience as an adjunct professor for the OTA program at Polk State College in Winter Haven, FL. Her passion for OT and growth mindset continually challenges her to excel in her field.


Related Courses

Typical Child Development, Birth through Five
Presented by Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Video

Presenter

Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Course: #31240Level: IntroductorySubject Area: Understanding principles of child development and learning1 Hour
  'learn the how a child grow between 0-5'   Read Reviews
This course will walk you through the developmental milestones of children from newborn to kindergarten. You will learn to identify the typical developing abilities per age in the areas of cognition, social-emotional, speech and language, gross and fine motor skills.

How Primitive Reflexes Affect the Child
Presented by Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Video

Presenter

Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Course: #31250Level: IntermediateSubject Area: Understanding principles of child development and learning1 Hour
  'Great information!'   Read Reviews
All infants are born with primitive reflexes to aid in the birthing process and with motor development. This course will cover the characteristics of 8 main reflexes, how they affect the baby, and how the retained reflexes affect the child if they do not integrate.

Developmental Foundations of Handwriting
Presented by Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Video

Presenter

Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Course: #31154Level: IntroductorySubject Area: Understanding principles of child development and learning2 Hours
  'Very informative'   Read Reviews
The skill of handwriting requires postural control, motor control, bilateral coordination, visual perception, visual motor skills, grip patterns, language development and social emotional skills. This course is designed to delve into each of area to understand child development in context to handwriting. The main focus is on developmental activities for each foundational skill area to promote prewriting skills.

Developmental Skills for Handwriting
Presented by Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Video

Presenter

Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Course: #30419Level: IntroductorySubject Area: Understanding principles of child development and learning1 Hour
  'A very comprehensive review of the Development stages'   Read Reviews
The skill of handwriting requires postural control, motor control, bilateral coordination, visual perception, visual motor skills, language development and social emotional skills. This course is designed to delve into each of area to understand child development in context to handwriting.

Foundational Skills and Activities for Handwriting
Presented by Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Video

Presenter

Dena Bishop, OTR/L
Course: #30424Level: IntroductorySubject Area: Understanding principles of child development and learning1 Hour
  'Great content and resources'   Read Reviews
This course details the multiple foundational motor and perceptual skills required for handwriting such as bilateral coordination, visual spatial relations, visual motor skills and grip patterns. The main focus is on developmental activities for each foundational skill area to promote prewriting skills.

Our site uses cookies to improve your experience. By using our site, you agree to our Privacy Policy.