Barry & Sargent: Optometrists

"Eye Care Professionals serving Wellington since 1920"

1st Floor, The Grand,
16-18 Willis St, Wellington

Telephone: (04) 473 7047

7 Hartham Place South,

Porirua

Telephone: (04) 237 8323

Vision Training

What are Visual Perceptual Skills

To appreciate Visual Perceptual Skills is easiest by separating the skills into different categories.

Through Visual Spatial skills a child develops what is commonly called Directionality. A child has to understand the similarities and differences of the two sides of their body to then appreciate how this concept can be transferred to other people and objects.

Telling the difference between b and d requires knowing which way round the stick goes on the ball.

Without this there is no consistency to sequencing sounds in a left-to-right direction. Also the English written word and sentence is built on a left-to-right page and children who do not have an inherent understanding of these concepts will find the left-to-right directional printing and writing hard to follow and recall.

Few children ever confuse a w with an m.

Visual Analysis skills include realising the important features of what one is looking at, the similarities and differences between shapes and symbols, for visualisation (visual construction), recall and … later – easy recognition. Manipulation of the visual images becomes important as we mature for comparing shapes and symbols, and developing thinking and logical reasoning skills. Higher level Visual Analysis skills are built on a good understanding of Directionality.

Recognising the difference between an m and an n requires more than good eyesight.

Visual-Motor skills are our ability to graphically represent what we see. This includes something as early as being able to copy a square, or form a letter, to being able to draw a picture of a building in three dimensions. At every age there are expectations of our ability to put pencil to paper and this is commonly a test to show how much we understand and the level of our thinking.

"Dog-ears" on a diamond are a strong sign of immaturity in Visual-Motor skills of an 8-9year old.

Visual Auditory skills encompass our skill and knowledge at matching sounds to visual symbols so that they can be used in a visual manner. The spoken word is heard (processed) over time as a sequence of sounds but written spatially and recognised as a whole, simultaneously. These skills include manipulation of sounds visually, such as breaking down the individual sounds (phonemes) to write or check phonetically.

Words such as past and passed sound no different when spoken but you can ‘see’ the difference in them when they are spoken in a sentence. The difference between two and to is visual and conceptual although they are both used in our verbal language

Asking a child to say hospital is typically a verbal task, but asking the child to take the pi out of

hospital is a visual task.

Training Visual Perceptual Skills

Barry and Sargent make no guarantees and take no responsibility for misinterpretation of information provided through this website or other materials available through our practice.