Learning and Visual Figure-Ground Discrimination

Visual Figure Ground

If your child cannot distinguish a shape or a printed character from its background, she is having trouble with visual figure-ground discrimination.

Yesterday, we looked at visual discrimination. Today, we’re going to take a brief look at this slightly different visual processing skill.

How can you tell your child is having this kind of dilemma?

She will have significant trouble:

  • Finding details or answers from a page full of printed words or numbers.
  • Identifying images within or against competing backgrounds.

The ability to pick out details without getting confused by the background or surrounding images is important for learning. When children experience difficulty in this area, their concentration and attention are affected.

Figure Ground Scenery

As they progress from one grade level to another, the demand for this skill increases.

Are you wondering how you can help your child overcome this struggle?

You can begin with these activities:

  1. Games like
    1. Pick-up Sticks
    2. Painting by Numbers
  2. Paper and pencil tasks like
    1. Find hidden objects in a picture and circle them in different colors
    2. Find all the words on a page beginning with m or ending with –ing.
  3. Sorting
    1. Mix 2 or 3 types of objects and have the child sort them by category.
    2. Pick out one item from a box full of different ones.

Which practice activity resonates with you?

Florence is an Optimist, Encourager, Author, Speaker, Consultant & Mom of the most amazing daughter ever. She shares tips, tools, and resources with parents of dyslexic children to stop the struggle. A believer in the unique learning abilities of all children, she is a strong advocate for those who learn differently.

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Categories: Learning, Vision

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4 thoughts on “Learning and Visual Figure-Ground Discrimination”

  1. Darling Flo

    Thank you for another enlightening post, sweets. I often have some trouble doing so – although it hasn’t really ‘affected’ my work as such. 🙁

    But I do have one suggestion – use Internal links to ‘link back’ to your previous posts. For instance, when you say that you talked about ‘visual discrimination’ yesterday, just add a Hyperlink to ‘Visual Discrimination’ and link to yesterday’s post. This way, your reader would be able to read your previous post immediately – without searching for it 😀

    Your posts are WONDERFUL, and your readers will ENJOY them. So LINK THEM without fear 😉

    Hope you didn’t mind, darling! #HUGS

    LOVE YOU
    Kitto

    Reply

    • Thanks for your continued support, my dear Kitto.

      Over time, most of us adults have learned how to compensate for the inconsistencies in learning or habits we developed as children.

      Thank you for the “link back” suggestion. I used it in a previous post, but sometimes the pressure of this challenge does cause lapses…especially to newbies like me. I appreciate you.

      Reply
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