Functional Vision Skills: Essential for Your Child’s Play and Learning
For infants born with sight, vision is a huge driving force behind development. A newborn baby’s vision allows a baby to see high contrast images at a distance of approximately 8-10 inches from his/her face; perfectly designed to focus on mom and dad’s face during snuggles and feeds! In addition to promoting early bonding opportunities, babies are motivated by vision (amongst other senses) to progress through developmental skills. Babies, for example, are motivated to lift their head during tummy time to look at their (adorable!) faces in a mirror. They initiate their first reach after seeing something that they want to grab. Babies even begin to crawl or climb to reach an object out of reach that is desirable to them.
Visual skills help our babies and children successfully progress through development. Successful use of vision, however, requires more than just 20/20 visual acuity! It requires the ability to move the eyes smoothly (oculomotor skills), perceive visual input accurately from the environment (visual perceptual skills), and coordinate these skills with our motor system (visual motor integration). See below for descriptions of each of these skill sets and why they matter in our kids’ day to day activities.
Oculomotor Skills: Oculomotor skills refer to the physical movement and alignment of our eyes; these movements are controlled by 6 muscles surrounding each eye, the extraocular muscles. We must be able to move our eyes in a smooth and coordinated manner in order to efficiently bring in visual information from our environment.
Visual Fixation refers to the ability to hold focus on a static, non-moving visual target. This skill is the foundation of higher level oculomotor skills. We must be able to clearly focus on a single object before we can switch focus between multiple objects or maintain focus on moving objects.
Saccades refer to the ability to “jump” focus from one static (non-moving) target to another. Smooth saccadic eye movements are required for success in a huge number of our daily activities. Reading, for example, requires our eyes to “jump” from one word to the next, and make an even larger “jump” from one line of text to the next line of text. We also use saccades as we visually search for a missing object in a room or bag, or as we look at our surroundings to navigate a space.
Visual Pursuits (or tracking) refer to the eyes’ ability to sustain fixation on a moving target. This includes following a ball with the eyes and can be especially important during sports and games.
Eye Teaming (or binocular vision) refers to the ability to use our eyes together to see a single image. If our eyes are not aligned appropriately or do not move together efficiently, we can have blurred or even double vision. The ability of our two eyes to work together is also what allows us to have depth perception. Convergence and divergence are examples of eye teaming skills. Convergence allows our eyes to come together to look at an object up close, while divergence allows our eyes to move apart to maintain a single image when looking at objects farther away. Convergence and divergence skills are used heavily in the classroom as students look back and forth from a paper on their desk to the teacher and/or blackboard.
Visual Perceptual Skills: Visual perception refers to our ability to understand, interpret, and use the information we see with our eyes. It allows our brain to identify and derive meaning from what we see. Without intact visual perception, we are unable to accurately use the visual information that is sent to our brains. Visual perceptual skills include the following:
Visual Discrimination allows us to determine individual characteristics of items and distinguish them from other objects. Using visual discrimination tells us the shape, orientation, size and color of an object. For example, we use visual discrimination to sort dimes from nickels based on size.
Figure/ground allows us to identify an object from its background. We use this skill as we search the junk drawer for a pen or when we sort the laundry. Poor figure-ground skills can mean having trouble sorting out details. Reading can be a challenge for children with poor figure-ground perception as they have difficulty scanning a busy page to find the point of focus.
Visual Closure is the ability to visualize what something looks like when we don’t have all the details. This allows us to find objects that are partially hidden from view (we “fill in” the pieces of an object that we don’t see in order to identify it). This skill also helps children to read quickly and efficiently by allowing them to recognize words by sight without processing each letter individually.
Visual Memory and visualization allow us to recognize and remember visually presented materials. This is also an important skill during reading and writing. A child who has poor visualization and visual memory will have difficulty recognizing letters, numbers, and sight words.
Form Constancy is the ability to identify an object when it is presented in a different form. For example, we use form constancy to know that an “P” is a “P” even when presented in a different font, orientation, or size. A child with impaired form constancy might have difficulty identifying words when they are presented in a different way.
Spatial Relations refers to the ability to know where objects are in space in relation to each other and in relation to ourselves. The ability to accurately perceive spatial relationships outside the body relies heavily on our own body awareness and ability to know where our body is in space. Children first learn concepts such as up, down, front, back, right and left on their own bodies before they are able to project those concepts onto objects in the environment. Difficulty with visual spatial relations might present in a child who has poor coordination and balance, is clumsy, and/or has writing difficulty (reverses letters and numbers), among other things.
Visual Motor Integration: Visual motor integration refers to the ability to coordinate our vision and our movements together in a smooth and accurate manner. We use our eyes and movement together as we write or draw on a paper, cut out a shape, stack blocks, put together a puzzle, catch a ball, kick a soccer ball, etc. Even simple activities such as walking or climbing stairs require the coordination of our visual and motor systems to avoid bumping into obstacles or allow us to judge the space required to take a large enough step.
***If your child appears to have difficulty in any one of these visual areas, consider an Occupational Therapy evaluation with Tiny Transformations! Our occupational therapists are skilled in evaluating functional vision impairments. We utilize both compensation and remediation techniques to help your child succeed in the classroom and beyond.