Abstract:

Optimal development of visual perception is considered to be one of the basic prerequisite of school success of young school age pupils. Researches and also experience from practice confirm that deficits in the field of visual perception very often appear in the period of compulsory school education at children with specific developmental learning disorder. Therefore the development of visual perception is monitored at these children already in preschool period and is often a part of so called primary school enrolment or during a test of school readiness in an Educational and Psychological Counselling Centre.

Due to the fact that partial areas of visual perception can be systematically developed and are developed since a child is born up to the young school age, our aim was to compare two diagnostic material and results. One of them is a Czech test of visual perception according to Felcmanová, which is recommended to kindergarten and primary school teachers to determine so called school readiness. In the second case we talk about a foreign Test of Visual Perceptual Skills (TVPS-3), which maps seven areas of visual perception: visual discrimination, spatial relationships, form constancy, sequential memory, visual memory, figure-ground, visual closure.

In the pilot project there were 21 preschool age children at the age of 5 years and 3 months up to 7 years and 8 months, who attend kindergarten. (Children at the age of 3 up to 6 attend kindergarten in the Czech Republic, currently being disbanded at the age of 2, in case of school immaturity up to the age of 7. Since the year 2017 the last year of preschool education is compulsory for children).

From the statistical processing is clear that the results of preschool age children in the Test of Visual Perceptual Skills and the Test of Visual Perception according to Felcmanová mutually correlate. Felcmanová´s Test not only contains diagnostics of visual perception but also grapho-motor skills and visual motor coordination, and in comparison with TVPS-3 is deprived of visual and sequence memory, which is very important during development of visual perception and its weakening may occur in difficulties while learning, memorizing and recalling of shapes, letters and numbers.

Kindergarten teacher students and first grade primary school teacher students, who had a chance to compare both of these tests within bachelor work and diploma thesis, they consider subjectively the Test of Visual Perception according to Felcmanová as fully satisfactory, on the contrary they evaluate the Test of Visual Perceptual Skills as too difficult at the first sight. From the administration´s point of view both of the tests are different and difficult to compare with their evaluation and strenuousness. Both tests can probably reveal so called school not readiness or poorly developer visual perception. Nevertheless, the Test of Visual Perceptual Skills analyses better partial components of visual perception and enables the pedagogue to have a targeted focus on development of the child´s/pupil´s weakened component.

Keywords:

Visual perception, Test of Visual Perceptual Skills, Test of Visual Perception according to Felcmanová.