The Importance of Visual Discrimination

So, last week I jotted down some of my tips for developing Visual Foreground and Background Perception.  Today, I will be talking about Visual Discrimination.

Visual Discrimination is the ability to notice visual similarities and differences between objects, pictures and symbols.  Mastering this skill forms the foundation to sorting, matching and categorizing.  It is essential for educational activities like reading, spelling and mathematics where students need to notice small differences in letters and numbers.

How would you know a students has insufficient Visual Discrimination?

• This student will find it difficult to distinguish between figures, letters and words.  They will confuse words like bad and dad, or numbers like 1 and 7.  This student will not be able to observe the differences.
• These students will be unable to sort and classify, maybe according to color, shape, size and/or type.
• They struggle to observe minor difference in pictures, patterns and drawings, which may result in difficulty differentiating between letters, figures and words.

Activities:

• Sorting activities according to color, shape, size, length, thickness, pattern and brightness.
• Matching activities:  Matching images, patterns and shapes that are the same.
• Give students two pictures that are the same except for a few differences and let them find the differences in the picture.
• Build vocabulary to help the student better describe objects, e.g.  bigger, smaller, thicker, longer, further etc.
• Let students sort pictures and/or objects to fit with a certain theme.
• Picture dominoes where students have to match same images together.
• Identifying images which are the same when they are placed in a row.

This Roll 'n Find Flower Game is perfect to develop Visual Discrimination.

Children need to roll the three dice and then find the flower with all three colors on in.  It not only develops Visual Discrimination but also Concentration skills, Visual Foreground and Background, Color Recognition and Scanning Skills.  Should you be interested in this game, you can purchase it here.

I hope I have offered some ideas on how to help your students with poor Visual Discrimination.