Visual perception is the ability to see and interpret the visual information that surrounds us. It is great if a child has 20/20 visual acuity, but if they cannot make sense and interpret what they see they may have a delay in visual perceptual skills.
Visual perception allows us to process, organize and store information gleaned from what we see.
Without adequate visual perceptual processing, a student could have any or many of these problems:
- difficulty learning to read and comprehend
- difficulty copying from the blackboard even though their visual acuity is 20/20
- poor eye-hand co-ordination
- reversing letters or numbers
- difficulty remembering sight words
- unable to concentrate in a busy, noisy classroom
Dr. Newman has been diagnosing and providing therapy for children with visual perceptual delays for over 20 years with great success.
Areas that are evaluated during visual perceptual testing include:
Visual Discrimination, Visual Memory, Visual Closure, Visual Sequencing, Form Constancy, Figure-Ground and Spatial Relations.
Some Activities to encourage Visual Perceptual Skills Development in Children:
- Puzzles of any type
- Lego – by following written instructions with a grid pattern for the next block placement
- Mazes
- Dot to dot games
- Concentration Card Game – a few pair of matched playing cards are turned upside down (start with small amount with a younger child). Two cards are turned over, if they don’t match they are turned back over and the next person takes a turn. If they can remember where the cards were, they will succeed with matched pairs more quickly.
- Finding an object hidden in a busy background – “Where’s Waldo“
- Electronic games that involve matching or determining which object is different, or memory games