What are spatial relation and spatial visualization?

Spatial relation is the capacity to represent and manipulate objects in two dimensions, while spatial visualization involves representing, rotating and manipulating objects in three dimensions.

What everyday tasks require visuospatial skills?

Everyday tasks like judging distance and speed, navigating routes, reading maps, and parking depend on accurate visuospatial processing and spatial judgment.

How can visuospatial skills be rehabilitated?

Rehabilitation uses targeted exercises and therapeutic activities that train spatial relation, spatial visualization, attention, planning and processing speed, adapted to age and clinical needs.

What activities help rehabilitate visuospatial skills?

Effective exercises include Stop the Ball, Pit Stop, Moving Cubes, Space Conquest, Angles, Clocks on Time and Number Lines, tailored for children or adults.

Which cognitive functions do visuospatial rehabilitation activities train?

These activities train spatial relation and visualization and also target sustained attention, inhibition, planning, processing speed, working memory and hemispatial neglect remediation.

8 activities to rehabilitate visuo-spatial skills

Q: What are visuospatial skills?

Visuospatial skills are the ability to mentally represent, analyze and manipulate objects, including perceiving positions, distances and spatial relationships in two and three dimensions.

Do you know what visuospatial skills are, what they are for, or how they are rehabilitated? Below we explain this cognitive function and present eight activities to rehabilitate visuospatial skills in adults and children.

Visuospatial skills

What are visuospatial skills?

Visuospatial skills are the ability to represent, analyze and manipulate objects mentally.

When it comes to visuospatial skills we distinguish two important concepts. Below, we explain what each one consists of:

Spatial relation: ability to represent and mentally manipulate objects in two dimensions.
Spatial visualization: ability to represent and mentally manipulate objects in three dimensions.

What are visuospatial skills for?

We continuously use visuospatial skills in our daily lives. For example, visuospatial skills allow us to calculate the distance between two objects, create mental maps to explain how to get to a specific point, and are essential when parking, since they help us judge whether we have enough space or, on the contrary, do not have room.

8 activities to rehabilitate visuospatial skills

Below we propose a series of activities to rehabilitate visuospatial skills designed by and for professionals.

Activities to rehabilitate visuospatial skills in children and adults

1. Stop the Ball

What does it involve?

The game Stop the Ball consists of calculating the exact moment when the ball passes a specific point.

Let’s give an example: the traffic light is green and we have to cross to the other side of the street, but there are only five seconds left before the light turns red — will we have time to get across? This everyday situation can make us feel insecure if we cannot accurately judge distance and speed, and it can be worked on with this activity.

NeuronUP Activities - Stop the Ball — NeuronUP activity Stop the Ball

What does this activity work on?

It is aimed at enabling the therapist to work with patients on spatial relation. In addition, this exercise trains inhibition, planning and processing speed.

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2. Pit Stop

What does it involve?

Pit Stop is one of the activities to rehabilitate visuospatial skills that consists in calculating the exact moment when the car should make the pit stop. In fact, it is the children’s version of the previous exercise.

NeuronUP Activities - Pit Stop — NeuronUP game *Pit Stop*

3. Moving cubes

What does it involve?

Moving cubes is an activity that consists of calculating how a series of cubes would look after moving some of them.

This activity is very useful for people with Parkinson’s.

NeuronUP Activities - Moving cubes — NeuronUP exercise *Moving cubes*

What does this activity work on?

In this case it works on the spatial visualization and planning.

4. Space Conquest

What does it involve?

Right Now we present the game Space Conquest. This child exercise set in space consists of jumping between different moving planets until reaching the final destination. It is part of the activities to rehabilitate visuospatial skills in children.

What does this activity work on?

It trains sustained attention, inhibition, planning and processing speed.

6. Angles

What does it involve?

Another of the activities to rehabilitate visuospatial skills in adults is Angles, and its objective is to form the indicated angle according to the given reference line. To do this, the user must carefully observe the position of the model’s lines and form the angle in the central image by clicking on the line they believe that, together with the one in green, represents the same figure.