From Looking to Learning: Visual Perceptual Skills

What is visual perception and how does it impact our ability to participate in our everyday activities? 

Let’s take a closer look at it together!

What is it?

• Visual perception is the brain’s ability to interpret, organize, and understand visual information.
• This cognitive ability is essential to engage in daily activities, such as reading, writing, and navigating a room. 

 

Core Components

There are six key components of visual perception: 

1. Visual discrimination
   1. The ability to recognize different shapes, colors, and patterns. 
2. Visual memory 
   1. The ability to store and recall visual details. 
3. Figure-ground
   1. The ability to identify a specific object within a busy visual background (such as finding an item in a junk drawer). 
4. Form constancy 
   1. The ability to recognize an object as the same, even when it has a different size, shape, color, or orientation. 
5. Visual closure 
   1. The ability to identify an image even when part of it is missing or covered up. 
6. Spatial relations
   1. The ability to understand the position of objects in space. 
   2. This skill helps to prevent reversing letters, such as b and d. 

 

Impact

• Difficulty with visual perceptual skills can impact several different areas of daily life:
  • It may cause difficulty with academic tasks, such as copying from a white board or reading. 
  • Activities of daily living, such as dressing or food preparation, can be impacted.
    • It may be difficult to align the buttons on a shirt or locate a cooking tool in the kitchen. 
  • Difficulty with visual perception will cause greater difficulty in coordinating what you see with movements.
    • This may include writing or playing sports.  

 

How can OT Help? 

• If your child is struggling with visual perception, the OT will create client-centered interventions to strengthen their ability to interpret what they see. 
• Interventions such as utilizing puzzles and memory matching games will help to build the child’s ability to track visual information. 
• Utilizing tasks such as handwriting, drawing, and using scissors will help the brain and hands to work together to interpret incoming visual information. 
• The OT may modify the environment to reduce additional visual stimuli to help the child make sense of what they are seeing. 

If you think your child is struggling with visual perceptual difficulties, Building Blocks Occupational Therapy is here to help!  

 

Resources

Home. Cincinnati Childrens. (n.d.). https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/service/o/ot-pt/visual-motor-perception

How occupational therapy helps with visual-perceptual skills. advanced therapy clinic. (n.d.). https://www.advancedtherapyclinic.com/blog/how-occupational-therapy-helps-with-visual-perceptual-skills

Visual perceptual skills. The OT Toolbox. (2026, March 10). https://www.theottoolbox.com/visual-perceptual-skills/