What is Visual Motor and Why is it Important?

 

In occupational therapy, we work on many skills vital to a kid’s everyday life, one of those include visual motor skills. Visual motor skills are defined as being able to translate a visual image, or a visual plan, into a motor action - or in other words, taking what we see and turning it into movement in order to complete a task. They are the controlled coordination of the visual system (eyes, head, and neck) and the movement system (muscles, joints, and body parts). Visual motor skills include visual processing, visual perception, and hand-eye coordination, which are all needed for success in school, sports, crafts, games, dressing, or overall day to day life skills that Occupational Therapy addresses here at AKT. 

  Visual Processing is the movement of the eyes and ability to collect information. 

• Examples of visual processing activities you could try at home include: 

• Holding a picture up in front of your child with either shapes, words or a picture and having them draw/write what they see 

• Replicate a picture by building with legos

• Imitate a block design shown 

• Use play-dough to form shapes or letter shown 

• Creating patterns or finishing a pattern 

Visual perception is our ability to make sense of what we see. Visual perceptual skills are essential for everything from navigating our world to reading, writing, and manipulating items. Visual perception is made up of a complex combination of various skills including visual memory, visual closure, form constancy, visual spatial relations, visual discrimination, visual attention, visual sequential memory, and visual figure ground.

• Examples of visual perceptual activities to try at home include:

• I Spy Games

• Where’s Waldo

• Word searches

• Memory games

• Puzzles

Hand-eye coordination is the way a person’s hands and eyesight work together effectively and efficiently which allows us to manipulate and manage objects and items. These motor skills allow us to collect visual information and use it in a motor action. Eye-hand coordination requires fine motor dexterity, strength, shoulder stability, core stability, etc.

• Examples of eye-hand coordination include:

• Catching a ball

• Manipulating pegs into a pegboard (i.e. Lite Bright)

• Lacing a lacing card

• Cutting activities 

Visual motor skills are an important part of childhood development and are needed to complete almost any activity. Without visual motor skills, a child couldn't catch a ball, complete a puzzle, or put on their shoes. It can also affect a child’s handwriting and school performance as well. Here at AKT, we work to improve these skills in occupational therapy to help kiddos succeed in their daily activities, at school, in sports and while they work on their hobbies! 

Elizabeth Bowden OTD, OTR/L