How to Check Visual Perception in Toddlers

What Is Visual Perception?

• Visual perceptual processing is subdivided into categories including visual discrimination, visual figure ground, visual closure, visual memory, visual sequential memory, visual form constancy, visual spatial relationships and visual-motor integration. Visual perception has to do with the ability to see the shape or pattern of the letter wherever it is located on the page, including its size and color. If your child reads with difficulty and tends to make numerous reading errors, he may have a visual perceptual weakness. Visual discrimination, figure ground and closure problems may result in a person confusing words with similar beginnings or endings and possibly an entire word. Visual information processing refers to the visual cognitive skills that allow us to process and interpret meaning from the visual information that we gain through our eyesight. If there is a visual processing disorder, it affects how the brain perceives and processes what the eye sees.

Warning Signs

• If you suspect your child may have a problem with visual perception, there are certain clues to look for. Your child may have a misunderstanding or confuse written symbols or he may be easily distracted, especially by competing visual information; there may be problems with judging distances such as bumping into things or placing objects too close to an edge; writing within margins or on lines or aligning numbers in math problems can be another indicator. Is the child having trouble getting out of the way of a moving ball, or is he constantly knocking things over? Does he have issues differentiating among similarly shaped letters and numbers such as "b" and "d," or among colors? If so, there may be a problem.

Other Ways to Check Visual Perception at Home

• Show your child how to do an activity. If his eyes wander off the subject though he says he is concentrating, this can be a warning sign. Do you notice your child constantly bumping into furniture or perhaps hitting himself on corners of chairs, tables or the doorway? Does your child tend to stand too close to others, not judging the distance between objects well? Does he constantly drop food or spill and knock things over? Does the child mix up his left from his right or have difficulty throwing and catching? Is he hitting or kicking a ball at an age-appropriate skill level? If he cannot visually plan how to organize clothes or toys, this can be an indicator. If he also has difficulty reading, then chances are there is a visual perception weakness.

How Can You Help Your Child?

• The good thing about visual perception is that it will improve naturally as your child develops and matures. In fact, by the age of 8 or 9, most children are thought to have a fully mature visual perception system. However, if your child appears to be developmentally slower then he should be, some experts offer the opinion that that you can intervene and help with his visual perception. Keep things positive and get your child motivated by trying to learn something new. You can do this by providing fun tasks within your child's playing ability. Board games, art, sports or any type of video game all help with visual perception. If your child enjoys art, let him engage in drawing, tracing, coloring, pasting and cutting. Playing with clay or Play-Doh to shape objects is also a helpful activity, as well as building with blocks and other similar activities.