Visual/Motor Perceptual Training

Children with such illnesses as Cerebral Palsy (CP) commonly have, among many accompanying disorders, a visual processing or perceptual disorder. This refers to a hindered ability to make sense of information taken in through the eyes. Different from problems involving sight or sharpness of vision, a visual processing problem can affect how visual information is interpreted or processed by the brain.

A visual perceptual disorder can make it difficult for children to wear shoes, use paper clips, complete jig-saw puzzles, play with toys and building blocks, identify colors and learn letters—all of which influence their daily living and social participation. It may cause:

- Problems affecting cognitive function and motor skills
- Delays in acquiring new motor skills
- Dependency in performing activities of daily living (ADL)

Impaired visual perception ability can also hinder rehabilitation following a stroke or accident.

Visual perceptual/Visual motor training programs

Children with a visual perception disorder also have difficulties with visual-motor integration (VMI): the interaction of visual skill, visual perceptual skill and motor skill. Children require effective, efficient eye-hand coordination to be able to copy, draw or write what they see.

Visual perceptual/visual motor training programs for children with a visual perceptual disorder develop their potential to participate as fully as possible at home, school or work. The OT clinician works with the child to establish efficient, independent visual and motor systems and then to ensure the two systems work together. Through modified play and learning activities, therapy aims to improve eye-hand, eye-foot and eye-mouth coordination. By improving visual motor integration (VMI), OT leads to improved learning and activities of daily living (ADL).

Recent studies of the effectiveness of visual motor/visual perception training programs to improve VMI and ADL have shown promising results.

Visual-Motor Integration

VMI is the coordination of two independent systems:

1. The Visual skills system, made up of:

Visual Perceptual Skills: Making sense of what one sees. The eyes send visual information to the brain, which the brain then interprets. A delay can affect a child’s ability to learn effectively

Functional visual Skills: such as eye tracking and convergence

2. The Motor skills system, made up of:

Shoulder stability: A growing child’s ability for the muscles to support the shoulder structure and make it easier for children to control smaller hand and finger movements and allow for good handwriting

Fine motor skills

Eye-hand coordination: Important to both the visual and motor systems, it helps the two systems work together

Common areas of difficulty & educational implications

Issues in the following areas often result in academic underachievement, often accompanied by anxiety and avoidance:

Visual discrimination: Using sight to notice, compare and distinguish one item from another. Problems in this area can include misunderstanding or confusing written symbols (+, x, /, &) or differentiating colors or similarly shaped letters and numbers (b/d, p/q, 6/9).

Visual sequencing: Ability to see and distinguish the order of symbols, words or images. This may include writing within margins or on lines or organizing and solving math problems.

Visual motor processing: Using feedback from the eyes to coordinate movement of other parts of the body. This may include copying from the blackboard or books or accurately identifying information from pictures, graphs or maps.

Long-term visual memory: Ability to recall something seen some time ago, such as remembering directions to a location.

Short-term visual memory: Ability to remember something seen very recently. This can include becoming easily distracted, especially by competing visual information or finding and retaining important information in reading assignments or tests.

Research

Visual perceptual ability of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP), which is significantly less than that of normal children, can be markedly improved by a visual perceptual training program.

Although visual perceptual and visual motor integration are independent skills, there is a significant correlation between them in children with CP.

Visual perceptual/visual motor training facilitates learning, but there are superior results with additive motor experience, through an earlier pick up of advance information.

Visual perceptual training programs had a positive influence on visual-motor integration and activities of daily living (ADL).

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Visual perceptual/Visual motor training programs

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