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What is visual perception?
What is visual perception?
Visual perception refers to the brain’s ability to make sense of what the eyes see. This is not the same as visual acuity which refers to how clearly a person sees (for example “20/20 vision”). A person can have 20/20 vision and still have problems with visual perceptual processing.
Why is visual perception important?
Why is visual perception important?
Good visual perceptual skills are important for many every day skills such as reading, writing, completing puzzles, cutting, drawing, completing math problems, dressing, finding your sock on the bedroom floor as well as many other skills. Without the ability to complete these every day tasks, a child’s self esteem can suffer and their academic and play performance is compromised.
What are the building blocks necessary to develop visual perception?
What are the building blocks necessary to develop visual perception?
- Sensory Processing: Accurate registration, interpretation and response to sensory stimulation in the environment and the child’s own body.
- Visual Attention: The ability to focus on important visual information and filter out unimportant background information.
- Visual Discrimination: The ability to determine differences or similarities in objects based on size, colour, shape, etc.
- Visual Memory: The ability to recall visual traits of a form or object.
- Visual Spatial Relation Ships: Understanding the relationships of objects within the environment.
- Visual Sequential-Memory: The ability to recall a sequence of objects in the correct order.
- Visual Figure Ground: The ability to locate something in a busy background.
- Visual Form Constancy: The ability to know that a form or shape is the same, even if it has been made smaller/larger or has been turned around.
- Visual Closure: The ability to recognise a form or object when part of the picture is missing.
(Source: Kid Sense)
What activities help improve Visual Perceptual Skills?
What activities help improve Visual Perceptual Skills?
- Hidden pictures games in books such as “Where’s Waldo”, "I Spy"
- Picture drawing: Practice completing partially drawn pictures.
- Dot-to-dot worksheets or puzzles.
- Review work: Encourage your child to identify mistakes in written material.
- Memory games: Playing games such as Memory.
- Sensory activities: Use bendable things such as pipe cleaners to form letters and shapes (because feeling a shape can help them visualize the shape). The letters can then be glued onto index cards, and later the child can touch them to “feel” the shape of the letter.
- Construction-type activities such as Duplo, Lego or other building blocks.
- Flash cards with a correct letter on one side and an incorrectly formed letter on the other side. Have the child try to draw the letter correctly, then turn over the card to see if it is right. (Have them write in sand or with finger paint to make it more fun).
- Word search puzzles that require you to look for a series of letter.
- Copy 3-D block designs
- Identify objects by touch: Place plastic letters into a bag, and have the child identify the letter by “feel”.
- Find the difference activities
- Object hunts: Give your child objects to look for- at the store (think shopping helper), out in nature or at home.
- Jigsaw Puzzles: Draw your child's attention to the details you notice and explain how you go about finding the pieces that go together (shape- especially for corner or frame pieces, color, pattern, etc.) when you first start working on this with your child. Discourage a "trial and error" approach.
- Play ball: Play catch with your child or have them throw a ball at a target, have them work on dribbling a ball. Start out with bigger balls or even balloons and progress to smaller balls as able.
- Hidden Pictures- Give the child magazines such as “Highlights” which have “find it” types of activities where the child has to find pictures, which are hidden within a background picture.
- “I see something/ I spy with my little eye…”: Play this game in which someone names the color of an object in the room and the youngster has to look around the room and try to guess the object by distinguishing it from the rest of the background. Or have the child find all of one letter or word on a printed page.
- Matching: Show the child a shape and have the child identify the one(s) that match it from a group of choices. The child could also be asked to match a letter or word from several choices and discuss why the other choices are wrong.
- Visual Memory: a) Show the child a shape, letter, or word for a few seconds and then take it away and have the child find one that matches it among several choices. b) Show the child a picture for a while and then take it away and have the child describe as much as he/she can from memory. c) Show the child a sequence of shapes, colors, or pictures that tell a story for a few seconds and then mix them up and have the child rearrange them in correct order.
- Sorting: Encourage the child to sort objects by size or shape. Or have the child complete a “Tupperware” type of shape sorter.
- Dots: Present the child with two grids of dots (5, 9, 16, or 25 evenly spaced dots) with some of the dots connected by lines on one grid and encourage him/her to copy the lines into the other grid. Some children need to have the dots numbered in the beginning to orient them in space.
- Mazes: Encourage your child to look ahead with their eyes before drawing and work from start to finish.
More ideas and information can be found at:
More ideas and information can be found at:
- OT Mom
- Therapy Fun Zone
- EdHelper
- YourTherapySource- scroll down on the page for visual perceptual activities
- AnOTMom
- BaltimoreTherapySpot- with a list of apps that help with visual perceptual skills
- LeftBrainCraftBrain
- TheOTtoolbox- info on visual-motor integration with milestone list, visual tracking activities, visual motor skills activities
- Saccades and learning
Resources:
Resources:
Hands-on Games:
Hands-on Games:
- Spot It- available in multiple themes to peak your kid's interest
- Rush hour
- Tetris games
- Blink
- Connect 4 / TicTacToe games
- Memory games
- Brainbox games- available in multiple themes to match your child's interests
- Speedy Match
- Tangoes or other Tangram type puzzles
- Blokus
- Quirkle
- Q-Bitz
- Guess Who?
- Simon
- KrazyDad- free printable mazes and other puzzles
- Perfection
Online Games / Apps:
Online Games / Apps:
- Learning Games For Kids: Some of our favorite games:
- Eyesight Challenge – works on visual figure ground through hidden pictures
- Jumping Arrows – works on directionality and eye hand coordination
- Ball Separation – works on tracking and eye-hand coordination
- Labyrinth – works on eye-hand coordination
- Tetris – works on visual spatial relationships, directionality, and eye hand coordination
- Simon – works on visual memory through pattern recognition
- Fruit Match – works on visual memory through matching
- EyeCanLearn- a website with many visual perceptual and eye movement online games
- Lumosity- with 3 free games daily. Most games target a variety of visual perceptual skills.
- Scholastic- free online games
- Dexteria VMI, created by an Occupational Therapist
- P.O.V. (Point of View) is a set of activities that teach spatial reasoning skills through fun, challenging, interactive activities.
- Shelby's Quest- and app that allows data tracking and allows kids to practice fine motor and visual perceptual skills
- More apps that develop VMI skills
- Blastoff to Reading games for letter reversals
Activity Books:
Activity Books:
- Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills Workbook
- Visual Perceptual Skill Building
- Visual Mind Benders
- Dyslexia Games
- Where is Waldo?- many different books available!
- I Spy- many different books available, graded by age group
- Dover Activity Books
Experience what it's like to have a visual processing dsorder
What is Visual Processing?
Visual Discrimination Activities (made for PK kids, but will work for older kids, too)
The seven visual perceptual skills
An OT mom talking about visual perceptual skills
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