Visual-Perceptual Skills Visual-perceptual skills are a child's ability to discriminate between two objects or a foreground and a background. This is a very important area for the occupational therapist to address because many children are unable to visually perceive depth and figure-foreground, thus causing safety concerns and interrupted learning. Also, children with poor visual-perceptual skills can become very frustrated and not attend to task very well. Visual-perceptual skills need to be adequate in both near and far copying skills to maintain optimal performance in the classroom.

Visual-Motor Coordination / Dexterity Visual-motor skills are related to a child's ability to cut, color, trace, and perform other eye-hand coordination activities needed to successfully complete a task.

Hand Preference: A child should establish hand-preference by age 6.

Prehension Patterns: This relates to how a child holds a writing utensil. By the age of 3 to 4, the ability to hold a writing utensil in a tripod grasp (thumb, forefinger and middle finger) should be emerging. The ability to use this grasp in writing tasks should be developing by the age of 6.

Manipulation Skills: A child should demonstrate different emerging skills in this area as he or she is growing. Mainly, by age 4 to 6, a child should be able to grasp several objects in one hand and distribute them out without dropping the other objects in the hand. This is called "in-hand manipulation skills" and is important for upcoming school-related activities. The ability to perform other types of grasp, such as the cylinder grasp and the pincer grasp, are important as the child grows in order to manipulate certain objects and complete school-related activities.

Pregraphics / Graphics: By school age, a child should be able to, or at least be trying to copy a variety of lines and shapes, such as horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, crossed lines, squares, circles, and triangles.

Cutting: As a child grows from age two to school age, he or she should move from snipping at the edges of paper to cutting on a straight line to cutting on a curved line. Each child may need different levels of assistance while trying to cut. A child with special needs may need the hand-over-hand assistance of an occupational therapist.