Vision, for most of us, requires no definition. It’s what we see, it’s what is right there in front of us. Visual acuity refers to our ability to accurately and sharply see the world around us. Some of us wear glasses to correct our vision so we can see without blurriness. Visual acuity is measured by a fixed standard. However, vision is much more than just what you see. Amazingly, it’s also how your body and your brain interpret that information.
Visual perceptual skills allow us to process and give meaning to what we see using our visual acuity. Visual perception is broken into a variety of sub-skills that all contribute to acquire visual information and store it for future use. These skills are often used concurrently. Visual discrimination refers to the ability of your child to recognize the features of objects such as shape, orientation, size and color. A skill that requires visual discrimination is being able to not confuse faces that look alike or words that begin with the same letters. Visual motor skills (can also referred to as eye hand coordination) are the ability to control movement guided by vision. Visual motor skills affect your whole body, however, not just hands. The skills governed by the visual motor system are too vast to name but include tying shoes, hitting a baseball with a bat, putting a puzzle together, kicking a ball that’s been rolled to you and following a hopscotch outline that’s been drawn by chalk on the ground. Visual motor skills are critical to early academic success in the form of writing, drawing and using scissors. Visual motor and perceptual skills are being used at the same time. The brain is busy actively interpreting visual information and coordinating responses to it. It’s complexity is far to extensive to explain here, but a review of what to expect when with your child is as follows: Fine motor development is closely related to visual motor and perceptual development as they are so interdependent. To help develop your child’s visual skills, consider the following ideas: The ideas and the fun are endless! By practicing these developmental activities, you will also be simultaneously working on fine and gross motor skills. Most of all, just have fun and be engaged with your child. |
Vision and Your Growing Child
Leave a comment »
Eye See: Visual Perceptual vs Eyesight
This week I was going to write about this exact topic. It was written well for Starfish therapies so I am sharing it here>
Occupational therapists are frequently asked what the difference between visual perception and eyesight is. Vision plays a significant role in the way we interact with our environment and how we learn.
Visual acuity refers to how clearly a person sees. Vision is more than just eye sight and how clearly we see. A person can have “20/20” vision but also have difficulty with visual perceptual skills.
Visual perception refers to the brains ability to make sense of what the eyes see. All of the body’s sensory experiences contribute to visual perception including sight, sound, touch, smell, balance, movement and muscle control contribute to visual perception. Visual perception is important for many different school tasks including reading, writing, cutting, copying from the board, visualizing past experiences, giving/getting directions, navigating the playground, and eye-hand coordination. The sub-areas of visual perception include the following:
Visual discrimination: The ability to see differences and…
View original post 231 more words
Advanced Pediatric Therapies 