23/02/2024
Our development and learning significantly depend on how we are able to use our eyes and visual skills. The hierarchy of visual perceptual skill development pyramid created by Mary Warren, OTR/L, provides an understanding of our eyes’ full potential. Although this was originally studied with adults with visual-perceptual deficits with acquired brain injuries, it is held true across all ages and interventions.
Visual acuity tends to be what is most often associated with visual ability, but our eyes are capable of much more than simply seeing clearly!
Visual acuity is one of the foundational visual skills, but so are oculomotor control (moving one’s eyes while keeping the head still) and visual fields (seeing through the periphery of one’s vision, or through “the corner of one’s eye”, as well as straight ahead).
Until those three skills have been developed, we are unable to progress onto higher level visual skills such as visual attention (maintaining visual focus on a fixed spot for a period of time) and visual scanning (using an organized search pattern, such as left to right and up to down, to visually search through the environment).
Next comes pattern recognition. A child must be able to problem solve, predict, and use working memory information to complete and follow a pattern. It also involves understanding the specific detentions and making of shapes and objects.
Build upon pattern recognition is visual memory. This is the first of the typical mentioned visual perceptual skills. Visual memory is the recognition of shapes and forms.
Last comes visual cognition. This is the functional use of vision and perceptual skills. It combines skills like visual discrimination (identifying visual differences between items), form constancy (recognizing that an image is the same even when presented upside down or rotated in a different direction), and figure ground perception (differentiating between an item and the background).
