Visual Perception

People are visually oriented beings. Knowledge of our environment is mainly garnered through visually deciphering forms and symbols that convey meanings. As with hearing, the quality of eyesight is not always a factor in a person's ability to interpret what is seen. Children with no sight impairment (i.e., 20/20 vision) can fail to develop visual perception skills that are necessary for learning in general and that are particularly crucial for learning how to read and write. Just as there is a difference between hearing and listening in auditory perception, so also there is a difference between looking and seeing in visual perception. Visual perception is training in seeing and interpreting visual stimuli. Efficient visual functioning normally takes some time to develop, hence the use of oversized and brightly colored visual materials in primary level classrooms. Although the majority of children successfully develop the ability to focus visually and to make fine discriminations in visual materials during the primary years, some will be well into the intermediate grades before these skills are adequately developed for visual learning tasks. Often these children will need special help. Children who are inefficiently processing visual stimuli may have some of the following difficulties. The inability to • Get meaning from visual clues • Focus on a stationary object • Discriminate characteristic differences in visual stimuli (i.e., color, shape, size/quantity, direction/distance) • Perceive individual parts as constituting a whole • Judge distance • Relate symbol to object • Separate foreground from background in a picture • Recognize and remember visual information • Track a moving object with the eyes • Reproduce simple visual patterns • Recognize familiar visual images when reduced or embellished • Direct an extremity to a specific target