Understand Your Child

Skill Development - Visual Processing

What is it?

Visual perceptual skills involve interpreting and understanding visual information, in order to use it effectively. These skills influence a child’s ability to spell, read and complete worksheets despite different fonts and pretty pictures, notice environmental cues (such as pack up time), use the space around them appropriately, and organize themselves (orientate clothing on their body and materials for task completion as well as copying homework from the whiteboard).

Why is it important?
A number of everyday activities rely heavily upon effective visual perceptual abilities. Some examples include; recognizing an incomplete object as the whole that it is (such as recognizing that half a shoe hidden beneath the bed is in fact a shoe; visual closure), sequencing visual objects such as letters and numbers in a meaningful order, and noticing small but important differences between visual objects (e.g. “a” differs from “d”, or isolating the multiple letters that combine to form a word for spelling, or page of words for reading; visual discrimination), recognizing an object as separate to it’s environment (eg so you can “see” the hat in the bedroom; figure ground), being able to perceive the positions of objects or even one’s own body in space in relation to other objects (eg the goal post on the sports field; spatial relations) and the ability to recognize a form after it is no longer visible (such as sight or spelling words; visual memory).

Building blocks necessary to develop visual processing include:
• Appropriate sensory integration
• Ability to screen input
• Ability to attend to task
• Ability to attend to detail
• Ability to process multiple inputs

You can tell there are problems with visual processing if the child:
• Lacks concentration with visual tasks
• Has difficulty copying from blackboard
• Is a poor reader and / or spellers
• Has difficulty with puzzles and block designs
• Has difficulty finding their place on page, or on the blackboard (in a copying activity in class)
• Has poor visual memory
• Reverses letters (eg. b/d in written tasks)

When visual processing is less than ideal, you might also see difficulties with:
• Organisation of work on the page
• Organisation of materials / items in bedroom
• Difficulty problem solving or modifying a mistake
• Sensory processing
• Planning and sequencing

What can be done to improve visual processing skills?
• Increase ability to attend to task
• Increase ability to attend to details in a meaningful way
• Specific strategies to improve and develop the presenting issues

Activities that can improve visual perceptual skills include:
• Memory and matching games
• Puzzles, and block building (where you copy a construction)
• Mazes and dot to dots
• ‘Spot the difference’ activities of ‘find the hidden pictures’ (eg ‘Where’s Wally?’)
Learning letter formation in groups of similar starting points, pattern of formation or ‘stories’ that help recall of correct formation