Visual-Perceptual skills | The foundational skills for learning to read/write
What are Visual Perceptual skills?
Visual perceptual skills refer to the abilities of our brain to make sense of what the eyes see. When we see something, our eyes send visual information to the brain. But, to make this information meaningful, the brain needs to interpret the information and make sense of it.
Example:- Suppose we see an apple placed on a table.
Our brain immediately interprets a lot of information about the apple like- the colour of the apple, the size of the apple, the number of apples, where is it placed(on a table), if there are other things near the apple, etc.
Its the visual perceptual skills which allows our brain to process & make sense of an apple placed on a table.
Why are visual perceptual skills important?
We use visual perceptual skills every day for dressing, eating, reading, writing, coloring, and playing.
Good visual perceptual skills are essential even for some simple tasks like:-
➤Finding the matching socks from the drawer,
➤Finding the red colour crayon from the crayon packet,
➤Reading a storybook line by line, Or,
➤Copying from the blackboard
Without it, the daily tasks of children such as completing homework or getting dressed, or even finding the matching pair of socks from a drawer can be extremely stressful.
If a child has deficits in visual perceptual skills, it will affect a child's
➧Academic performance.
➧Attention and concentration
➧Self-regulation
➧Organization skills
➧Self-esteem
How to identify if a child has difficulties with visual perception?
If a child does not have good visual perceptual skills, he/she might face difficulties with:-
➤Reading a book line by line. A child might be very slow to read or miss out on some words, or lines while reading.
➤Identifying similar letters or words. He may get confused between "b","d","p","q", or words like"was" & "saw".
➤Copying from the blackboard or, even from another copy is difficult.
➤Finding his favourite T-shirt from the cupboard.
➤With spatial concepts.Understanding concepts like "in, out, on, under, next to, up, down, in front of" can be confusing.
➤Completing partially drawn pictures.
➤The child might reverse numbers or letters while writing.
➤Sorting and organizing personal belongings The child might appear disorganized or careless in work.
Conclusion: there are many areas of visual perception that make learning to read and write & the completion of other daily tasks easy & smooth.
Categories of Visual perceptual skills
Form Constancy
Figure-Ground Perception
Figure-ground perception helps a child to focus & find a specific object, or piece of information in a busy background.
This skill helps a child to:
➧Not lose his/her place when reading or when copying from the board, or another book.
➧To find his favorite T-shirt from the cupboard
➧To find his/her specific toy from the toy box.
Visual Closure
➧This skill helps a child to read more fluently and quickly recognize words by the shapes & arrangement of letters without focusing too much on each letter.
➧This skill helps to make sense of words on a smudged page.
Visual Discrimination
Visual discrimination skills can help a child to pay attention to detail and to correctly discriminate & recognize letters, numbers, or words where there is only a small difference between them.(eg "b"&"p" or "was"&"saw").
➧This skill helps in reading and writing fluency because the child can easily identify the letters and words without confusion.
Visual-Spatial Relations
These skills refer to a child's understanding of the relationships of objects within the environment.
Example:-
➧Think of the direction, “Go put your shoes under your desk, give me the bottle placed on the table & sit in front of me on the chair”.
The child must understand the concepts of on, under, over, in front, behind, etc. in their environment to follow those spatial commands.
➧A child who has difficulties with visual-spatial relations might be poor in imitation skills, thus, copying steps in a dance class or in a drill class in school can be hard.
➧Playing games with a ball might be difficult for the child
➧In fine motor terms, visual-spatial relations are important for appropriate letter/word orientation while writing.
Example:- Writing in a straight line.
Visual Attention
It is the ability of our brain to focus on a particular object/information from all of the other available information.
Example:- A child has to focus on a page/a particular sentence or word while reading instead of the chairs/tables or whatever is happening outside.
Visual Memory
It is the ability to remember, recall a form or object & being able to find it out among many other forms.
➧With inadequate visual memory skills, a child might be too slow to copy an assignment because they can’t remember the information & transfer it from the board to their copy/notebook.
Other examples in daily life can be:-
➧Recalling where you have kept the house keys
➧Recalling where you have kept your phone before going out
Visual Sequential Memory
This is the ability to recall a sequence of objects or forms in the correct order.
➧These skills help your child remember the order of letters for spelling.
Other examples in daily life can be:-
➧Remembering phone numbers
➧Ability to give directions
Visual-Motor Integration
Visual-Motor Integration is the combination of visual perception and fine motor skills, and this combination is an essential prerequisite for good handwriting skills & many other daily tasks.
Find out how to develop good pre-writing skills in children in 👇
https://abhipsaot.blogspot.com/2021/07/pre-writing-skills.html
Find out some easy & effective activities to develop the fine motor skills in children 👇
https://abhipsaot.blogspot.com/2021/07/you-must-have-heard-lot-about-fine.html
How to develop good visual perceptual skills in children?
SORTING ACTIVITIES
These activities are excellent for developing visual discrimination, colour matching & attention span of your child
👉Sorting out matching colours
➧Use different colourful pegs/beads & matching colour cups.
➧Put all the small pegs inside one large container.
➧Then, ask your child to sort out all the colourful pegs into the respective colour cups.
👉Sorting out matching Shapes
➧You can use blocks of different shapes like triangles, squares, circles, etc.
➧Just like the above activity, keep them all together & ask your child to sort them out by their shapes.
⏩ You can start by giving them two very different shapes to sort, like circles & triangles.
⏩ Then, gradually increase the difficulty by giving similar shapes to sort out like- squares & rectangles, or, circles & ovals.
⏩ You can also give them many shapes to sort out making it more challenging.
(If you don't have shape blocks, you can cut some shapes out of waste cardboard & do the same activity)
👉Sorting out matching Water bottles
You can mix different kinds of water bottles at home(bottles of different colours or shapes or sizes) & ask to sort out similar ones & put them together.
➧Example:- Sort out all the pink bottles. all the green bottles & all the blue bottles.
👉Sorting out Crayons
Mix up different types of pens, pencils, markers, & crayons & spread them on a table.
Ask your child to sort out the pens, pencils, markers & crayons & keep them in different pen-holders/boxes.
MATTCHING ACTIVITIES
These activities are good for working on figure-ground perception, visual discrimination, colour matching & visual attention skills
👉Matching pair of socks
Ask your child to help you find the matching socks from a big pile of socks & clip them together.
⏩Start with very different socks (socks of different colors like blue socks, yellow socks, pink socks, etc.
⏩You can increase the challenge by asking him to match socks that are similar.
(Example:-Different shades/designs of black & white socks)
👉Rainbow colour matching
This simple activity can be very beneficial to develop: visual attention, visual tracking, colour matching, visual-motor integration and control of hand movements.
👉Shadow Matching activity
You can start from simple shapes & then give some complicated more similar-looking objects to match with their shadows.
👉Colour the letters
You can start with letters that look different(like A,C,T,etc) & then give the child similar letters like(b,d,p,q) to colour according to the colour given.
FIND THE SAME or THE DIFFERENT ONE ACTIVITIES
These simple activities are very enjoyable & are beneficial to develop visual discrimination, form constancy & visual attention in children.
👉Find the odd one out
You can start with fewer pictures in which the "odd-one" is very different & then make it more challenging by giving more similar pictures with little difference in the "odd-one-out" picture.
⏩Then, gradually ask him to complete more complex pictures.
👉Complete the puzzle
You can start by giving simple puzzles with fewer pieces & gradually give complex puzzles with a number of pieces.
DESIGN COPYING
These activities are enjoyable and self-engaging with multiple benefits. They help to develop form constancy, copying skills, visual-spatial relations, visual attention, praxis, fine motor skills & visual-motor integration.
👉Design copying with blocks
You can use Legos or colourful wooden blocks for design copying.
⏩ You can make a simple design with a few blocks & ask your child to copy you & make the same design.
⏩ Gradually increase the complexity of your design.
👉Design copying with picture
Ask your child to copy a simple picture.
ACTIVITIES FOR VISUAL MEMORY
👉What is the hidden object ?
You can use plastic cups or small bowls for this activity. Hide 3 small objects under 3 cups. Objects can be letters/numbers/small colour pegs.
➧Your child watches carefully as you hide them. Then, ask your child pointing to each cup "what is this?"
➧Your child has to remember & answer what is hidden under each cup.
⏩Make it more challenging by using more cups & hiding more objects. Have fun playing this game.
All of the above activities are not only easy & fun but are very effective to develop the visual-perceptual skills of a child.
These skills are essential prerequisites needed for reading, writing, dressing, organizing things, playing,etc.
All the above activities can be used by children with Autism, ASD, Down syndrome, Learning disabilities, Cerebral Palsy, Sensory processing disorders(SPD), or, for any child who is having deficits in visual-perceptual skills.
If you can practice these consistently, they will help your child build a strong foundation making their daily life much easier & they will not miss out on learning opportunities due to difficulty in visual-perceptual skills.
Try out!
About the writer :-
The writer’s name is Abhipsa Parida. She is an occupational therapist specialised in pediatrics and has been handling kids with special needs since 5 years. She is quite experienced and skillful in observation, assessment and planning intervention for kids with special needs. She uses evidence based practice and is very creative and updated in her approach while handling kids with special needs. She has her own clinic in Bhubaneswar and has handled many kids of different age groups with varying needs.
If you have any queries, you can mail them at abhipsaot21@gmail.
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