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Occupational therapists working with school-age children commonly evaluate and address visual perception concerns as part of the practice domain of performance skills (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2011). Yet much uncertainty exists about the nature of visual perception, its development, and what processes may be underlying deficit performance. Typical evaluation methods use standardized testing aimed at teasing out the specific components of visual perception in an effort to clearly understand the nature of difficulties. These components are characterized by the apparent task demands of various activities and include visual discrimination and visual memory, among others (Schneck, 2010). In an earlier issue of this Quarterly, Tsurumi and Todd (1998) provided a useful discussion of the specific cognitive analysis abilities involved in each of the distinct components purported to be assessed by the popular visual perception tests.
The purpose of this article is to offer a different approach to assessing task performance. Rather than looking at separate components, assessing the levels of processing that are involved in all visual perception tasks is proposed. Thus, regardless of whether the task is form constancy or figure-ground, whether it is nonmotor or has a motor output component, and whether it is a standardized test item or a classroom activity, performance can be interpreted in terms of the general cognitive analysis abilities the child brings to the task. The ultimate goal of this approach is to understand why an easy visual task is easy and what makes a more challenging one challenging. Such an understanding would point the way to helping children be more successful on visual tasks that support educational goals.
Four general areas of cognitive processes that are related to visual analysis are proposed: imitation, analysis, imagery, and flexibility.
Imitation
The earliest developing visual perception skill (although one could argue that it is not really a skill) is direct imitation of a visual stimulus. Although imitation suggests the mimicking of an action, Piaget used the term imitation to refer to direct perception because he believed that a perceived image results from an internal imitation of what the child sees (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956). Even tasks that are only visual, such as seeing exact matches, are considered perceptual imitation of the image because the child uses the stimulus directly, with...