Visual perception in everyday places

You get up in the dark to go to the bathroom and step on a toy you cannot remember seeing there the night before. During breakfast, your child storms into the kitchen crying because they cannot find their butterfly socks in their drawer but when you look you find it immediately. On your way to school drop-off, you successfully stop when a dog suddenly runs into the road. What do these all have in common you might be wondering? It all has to do with your sense of sight. Today we are looking at how our brain processes and interprets the information it receives from our eyes and how it affects our daily lives. This is called visual perception.

Visual perception starts to develop from the day you are born. There are several different visual perception areas and we will look at each briefly with some real-life examples.

Firstly I like to mention basic dependables, called basic constancies. These are knowing and identifying (through pointing) colours, shapes, sizes, numbers, body parts and left/right without naming them. Once we verbally name them, we then refer to them as basic concepts.

Visual discrimination

It is the ability to notice similarities and differences. A baby differentiating between their mother’s and father’s faces. It is seeing the difference between a car and a train or broccoli and a kiwi fruit. Being able to see the difference between letters and numbers, for example, the letter ‘a’ versus the letter ‘d’ or ‘s’ versus ‘5’. Differentiating between similar words like pan and man or sit and sip. Or the difference between the colours aqua and teal.

Figure-ground

The ability to focus one’s visual attention to lift the object of focus from its background. For example, finding a toy in a toy box or cutlery in the cutlery drawer. Finding your flight on a busy notice board, sorting puzzle pieces or finding a word in the dictionary. We also need figure-ground when copying work down from a book and to read without losing our place. Optical illusionists use figure-ground to create their illusions.

Spatial Perception

Spatial perception is a collection of various skills, but essentially it is our ability to make sense of visual input relating to each other, their orientation, their distance and movement whether physical or pictorial. It also gives us the ability to reason, understand and make choices as a result. For the purpose of this blog we will look at spatial relations and position in space.

Spatial relations is the ability to orientate yourself to an object or objects to each other. One also needs spatial awareness - the sense of direction – to allow you to sequence and respond with the best timing to respond safely, like ducking to go under a branch when riding your bike or to lift your foot to step over a toy. We use spatial relations to allow us to put a hat on our heads or put our feet in socks and shoes. It allows us to write numbers in place values under each other to do large number calculations or write letters and words with appropriate spacing when writing a sentence. It also helps us to place letters on a line and not to bump into people or objects when we go shopping.

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Position in Space is the ability to orientate self or an object in space, for example turning a triangular block with the point facing downwards upright to fit into the shape sorter lid or turning your pants inside-out. Knowing to turn your shoes with the heels towards you and the left shoe on the left side before putting it on or turning your body around to face the door before leaving. Under development of this skill is one of the contributing factors to letter reversals and confusions during reading and writing (b/d; M/W; f/t; u/n).

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Form Constancy

Knowing that the traits of objects do not change even when the colour, size, position, background or texture changes. For example a button-up skirt, tank top and t-shirt are all shirts. It allows us to read a sentence whether handwritten by different people, typed in different fonts, written on a board or on a screen in different colours.

Visual Memory

It is the ability to remember/memorise information received from the eyes. We have short term memory that lasts for a few seconds to a few hours, long term memory lasting for a very long time and visual sequential memory that helps us to remember the order we saw something. Our ability to remember visual input depends on the detail, amount of information and the time period we are exposed to the visual stimulus. Visual memory helps a person with spelling, to remember where in the supermarket the eggs are, making a favourite recipe, the order we get dressed in and even how we form letters for example.

Visual Closure

The ability to complete a picture, letter, word or sentence that appears to be incomplete to give it meaning. Some examples are building a puzzle, or knowing that it is your child’s shirt under the bed when you only see the sleeve peeking out or reading words together rather than reading each letter at a time.

Visual Motor Integration (VMI)

the ability to translate visual input (visual perception) into an appropriate motor output (fine motor control). For the development of VMI we need eye-hand-coordination, visual perception and motor control. It allows a toddler to pick a flower after seeing his mother do so or a baby copying a parent’s facial expression. Other examples include cutting out a picture, sketching a picture, or copying a dance routine.

Visual Perceptual and Visual Motor Skills Games and Activities - Your Therapy Source

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It is therefore very important that children experience a wide variety of interactions and visual experiences from the day they are born, throughout their developing years and into adulthood. It is also never too late to improve our visual perception skills.

If you are concerned about your child or your own visual perception, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Occupational Therapists here at Hanrahan Health via email at admin@hanrahanhealth.com.au or via phone on 02 4862 5063.

See some helpful links below.