Article: How to Improve Visual Processing: Skills, Strategies & Activities

Mar 18, 2021dyslexia

How to Improve Visual Processing: Skills, Strategies & Activities

Visual processing affects far more than reading. It can influence how easily someone copies from the board, finds information on a busy page, remembers what they have seen, interprets maps and graphs, organizes written work, solves puzzles, and navigates the visual world. When these skills are inefficient, everyday learning tasks can require far more time and mental effort.

In this article, we’ll explore the many skills involved in visual processing, what challenges can look like, and practical ways to strengthen these important abilities.

How to Improve Visual Processing blog offers an image of eyes and brains

What is Visual Processing?

Visual processing is the brain’s ability to interpret, organize, and make sense of the information we see. It is different from eyesight. A person can have 20/20 vision and still have difficulty processing visual information efficiently.

Visual processing is not a single skill. It involves a network of interconnected abilities that help the brain recognize, remember, locate, track, sequence, compare, and organize visual information. These skills work together constantly as we read, write, solve math problems, move through space, and interact with the world around us.

Because visual processing includes many different abilities, two people with visual processing challenges may struggle in very different ways. Understanding the specific skills involved can help parents, educators, and professionals identify more targeted strategies and activities.

What Do Visual Processing Challenges Look Like?

Visual processing challenges can be easy to miss because they often appear as unrelated difficulties. A learner may seem careless, disorganized, slow, or easily distracted when the underlying problem is that visual information is difficult to process efficiently.

Signs may include:

Losing place while reading, copying, or moving between a board and a page.
Skipping or repeating words, lines, or sections of text.
Confusing visually similar information, such as letters, numbers, symbols, shapes, or patterns.
Struggling to find information on a crowded worksheet, in a textbook, or within a visually busy environment.
Forgetting visual information soon after seeing it, even when it seemed clear in the moment.
Working slowly on visually demanding tasks, particularly when scanning, comparing, or locating information.
Having difficulty with spacing, alignment, directionality, or spatial relationships when writing, solving math problems, or organizing work on a page.
Becoming overwhelmed by visual clutter, dense text, or too much information presented at once.
Avoiding visually demanding activities or becoming fatigued or frustrated more quickly than expected.

The pattern matters more than any single sign. A learner who occasionally loses their place or overlooks a detail may not have a visual processing weakness. However, when these difficulties occur frequently and interfere with learning or everyday tasks, it can be helpful to explore which specific visual processing skills may be involved.

What Are the Different Visual Processing Skills?

The signs described above can arise from different underlying visual processing abilities. For example, two learners may both lose their place while reading, but the reasons behind the difficulty may not be the same. One may struggle to track information across the page, while another may have difficulty filtering out surrounding visual details.

Identifying the specific skills involved can make support more targeted and effective. The following visual processing abilities each play a distinct role in how the brain manages visual information:

Recognizing and Remembering Visual Information

Visual Discrimination

The ability to notice similarities and differences between visual details. This skill helps learners distinguish between similar letters, numbers, symbols, shapes, and patterns.

Visual Memory

The ability to remember visual information after it is no longer in view. Visual memory supports recalling words, images, patterns, directions, and other information that has been seen.

Visual Sequencing

The ability to remember and recognize visual information in the correct order. This skill is important when working with sequences of letters, numbers, symbols, patterns, or steps.

Visual Closure

The ability to recognize a complete object, word, or image when only part of it is visible. This helps the brain make sense of incomplete visual information without needing to examine every detail.

Finding and Following Visual Information

Visual Figure-Ground

The ability to locate important visual information within a busy background. This skill helps learners find a word on a crowded page, locate an item in a cluttered space, or focus on relevant information while ignoring surrounding details.

Visual Tracking

The ability to move the eyes smoothly and accurately across visual information. It supports the following text across a page, moving from one line to the next, scanning information, and copying.

Visual Attention

The ability to maintain focus on relevant visual information over time while resisting distraction from competing visual input.

Understanding Space and Position

Visual-Spatial Processing

The ability to understand where objects are located in relation to oneself and to one another. It supports directionality, spacing, alignment, maps, graphs, geometry, and navigating the physical environment.

Visual-Motor Integration

The ability to coordinate visual information with physical movement. This skill is involved in handwriting, drawing, copying, building, catching a ball, and other tasks that require the eyes and hands to work together.

Using Visual Information Efficiently

1Visual Processing Speed

The ability to quickly recognize, interpret, and respond to visual information. When this skill is slow, visually demanding tasks may take longer even when the learner understands what to do.

1Visual Reasoning

The ability to analyze visual information, recognize relationships and patterns, and use what is seen to solve problems. This skill supports puzzles, diagrams, geometry, pattern recognition, and nonverbal problem-solving.

How Can You Strengthen Visual Processing Skills?

Visual processing skills can be strengthened through targeted activities that provide meaningful practice. The goal is not to work on every visual skill at once, but to identify which areas are creating difficulty and choose activities that address those specific needs.

Activities for Recognizing and Remembering Visual Information

Strengthen visual discrimination, memory, sequencing, and closure with activities such as:

Play matching and memory games using cards, symbols, words, or images.
Study an image or arrangement of objects, hide it, and recreate it from memory.
Practice “What changed?” activities by removing, adding, or rearranging items.
Reproduce visual patterns using blocks, beads, shapes, or drawings.
Complete partially hidden pictures, words, or objects.
Sort and compare similar letters, numbers, symbols, or designs.

Activities for Finding and Following Visual Information

Build figure-ground skills, tracking, and visual attention with activities such as:

Complete hidden-picture activities, word searches, mazes, and visual scavenger hunts.
Search for specific letters, numbers, words, or symbols within a busy page.
Follow moving objects with the eyes or track targets across a page.
Use puzzles and games that require careful visual scanning and sustained attention.
Practice locating information in charts, schedules, maps, or other visually complex materials.

Activities for Building Visual-Spatial Skills

Develop spatial awareness and visual-motor integration with activities such as:

Build designs from models using blocks, tangrams, puzzles, or construction materials.
Copy increasingly complex patterns, shapes, and designs.
Practice drawing, tracing, origami, crafts, and other eye-hand coordination activities.
Work with maps, grids, coordinates, and spatial directions.
Play games that involve rotation, perspective, positioning, and mental manipulation of shapes.

Activities for Improving Visual Efficiency and Reasoning

Strengthen visual processing speed and reasoning with activities such as:

Play timed visual matching, sorting, and scanning games while keeping the focus on accuracy.
Solve pattern, logic, and nonverbal reasoning puzzles.
Compare images to quickly identify similarities, differences, and missing details.
Complete visual analogies, matrices, and sequencing challenges.
Play games that require rapid recognition, flexible thinking, and visual problem-solving.

The most effective practice is targeted, engaging, and appropriately challenging. Activities should stretch a learner’s skills without creating unnecessary frustration. As efficiency improves, the level of complexity can gradually increase.

Who Can Benefit from Visual Processing Activities?

Visual processing activities can benefit learners of all ages who have difficulty efficiently interpreting, remembering, organizing, or responding to visual information. They may be especially helpful for individuals who:

Have dyslexia or other learning differences that affect how visual information is processed and managed.
Have weak visual memory and struggle to remember words, images, patterns, or other information they have seen.
Lose their place when reading, copying, scanning, or shifting between sources of information.
Struggle with visual attention or tracking and find it difficult to follow or locate information efficiently.
Become overwhelmed by visual clutter or have trouble finding important information on a busy page.
Work slowly on visually demanding tasks, even when they understand what to do.
Have difficulty with spatial relationships or visual-motor tasks such as spacing, alignment, copying, drawing, maps, or puzzles.
Benefit from multisensory and game-based practice that makes skill development more engaging and meaningful.

Continue Your Journey

Visual processing is not a single skill, and no single activity will meet every learner’s needs. The most effective support begins with understanding the specific areas of strength and challenge and selecting strategies, activities, and tools that provide targeted, meaningful practice.

If you'd like additional support, explore these Good Sensory Learning resources:

Visual Processing Resources – Explore strategies, activities, and materials designed to strengthen a wide range of visual processing skills.
Visual Processing Workshop – Deepen your understanding of visual processing and learn practical strategies for recognizing and supporting different areas of visual processing difficulty.
Visual Memory Resources – Discover games and activities that strengthen the ability to remember and recall visual information.
Visual Tracking and Attention Resources – Build visual scanning, tracking, focus, and the ability to locate important information efficiently.
Educational Games – Develop visual processing, attention, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving through engaging, game-based practice.

With the right combination of targeted practice, meaningful activities, and appropriate support, learners can become more efficient and confident in the way they process and use visual information.

Cheers, Erica

Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator, and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning. She is also the director of Learning to Learn and Learning Specialist Courses.