It’s incredible to think that our brains were never actually designed to “read”. Using fMRI, neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene’s lab discovered that “visual” parts of the brain that respond to objects and faces have evolved to become highly specialised in recognising written words once people learn to read.
As educators, we understand the profound impact that visual processing skills can have on a child’s overall development and academic performance. From recognising shapes and patterns to differentiating between letters and numbers, a child’s ability to effectively perceive, discriminate, and remember visual information is crucial for their learning journey. Let’s delve deeper into these key visual processing abilities and explore how we can nurture them in the classroom.
Visual Perception: The Gateway to Understanding
Visual perception is the brain’s remarkable capacity to interpret and make sense of the visual information it receives. This includes recognising shapes, colours, and patterns, as well as understanding spatial relationships and the relative positions of objects.
Visual Discrimination: Noticing the Subtle Differences
Visual discrimination is the ability to identify similarities and differences between objects, letters, or symbols. This skill is essential for tasks like reading, math, and problem-solving. When children struggle with visual discrimination, they may have difficulty differentiating between letters, numbers, or shapes, which can significantly impact their academic progress.
Imagine a student trying to learn the alphabet. If they cannot visually discriminate between letters like “b” and “d,” or “p” and “q,” they will have a hard time mastering letter recognition and, consequently, reading and writing. Developing strong visual discrimination skills empowers children to accurately perceive the nuances that distinguish one visual element from another, setting them up for success in a wide range of academic domains.
Visual Memory: Recalling What We See
Visual memory is the ability to recall and remember visual information, such as the appearance of objects, symbols, or spatial layouts. This skill supports a child’s learning, as they need to retain and retrieve visual cues during lessons and assignments.
Strengthening Visual Skills in the Classroom
By incorporating various strategies and collaborating with specialists, we can help our students unlock their full academic potential. Check out some of our favourite resources!
Puzzles – At Ready4Learning we love puzzles! Not only do puzzles encourage visual discrimination, they support other foundation skills such as fine motor skills as well as enhance focus and concentration.
I-spy – This can be done in a variety of ways whether as a whole group using objects in your space or classroom, the books or simply laminate some from our resources to have out for children to engage in.
Spot the difference – these are fun and again will foster and develop focus and concentration.
Picture books – We can use the illustrations to “spot” what is going on in the story, such a great way to gift vocabulary too!
Memory match – Simple playing cards or pictures are a fun way to support that all important visual memory whilst supporting the development of skills such as turn taking and self regulation.