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Children learn through play. As an occupational therapist who works with children and youth, I use games and toys almost every day to help develop important cognitive, visual perceptual, motor, sensory, social, play and leisure skills. While many different types of activities can be used in therapy, this blog focuses on off-the-shelf games and toys that are accessible to most. Whether you are a therapist, parent, teacher, or a game lover like me, I hope you discover something useful while you are here. Learn a different way to play a game you already own or discover a new game for your next family game night. Either way, just go play. It's good for you!

The OT Magazine named The Playful Otter one of the Top 5 Pediatric OT Blogs.


Mar 2, 2020

Figure Ground


Visual figure ground is a visual perceptual skill that refers to the ability to find something specific in a busy background. Have you ever searched for Waldo, a young man with a red hat and striped shirt that hangs out in crowded places? Where's Waldo is a figure ground puzzle. Another example that I think most people are familiar with these days is a word search puzzle: Find a list of words embedded in a grid made up of letters.

Can you count the pieces of cheese in the image on the left? Which mouse has the red nose on the right?


But seriously, silly puzzles aside, figure ground is a skill that most of us use over and over during the course of a day without even thinking about it. Consider these situations where this skill is used:
  • Copying from a book or the board
  • Finding a specific piece of clothing in a full drawer
  • Finding a specific toy in the toy box
  • Locating road signs while driving
  • Looking up a word in the dictionary
  • Finding the scissors in the junk drawer
  • Scanning a book for relevant information while studying
  • Finding pieces while working a jigsaw puzzle
  • Finding a can of beans in the food cupboard 
  • Finding a specific Lego piece in a pile of Lego pieces
You can see this list could go on and on. You can also see why this is an important skill to target for improvement when someone has difficulty in this area. There are lots of ways to do this, but since this blog focuses on games and toys, we'll focus on that.

Some games require figure ground skills without it being the focus or goal of the game. Think of games with busy game boards, like Chutes and Ladders. If you can't separate the different images on this board it will be impossible, or at least extremely frustrating, to play. Bingo cards, games with lots of dice or cards and games with multiple small manipulative pieces may also be a challenge. Logic games that require manipulating a lot of pieces in a crowded space would qualify. Games like Bounce Off that require you to aim and create a pattern in a busy background, and to recognize it when you have it are also good examples.

On the other hand, there are some games that are designed to exercise figure ground skills. Check out the long list of I SPY games, by Scholastic Books. They are known for their figure ground games and I own, use, and have blogged about many of them. Search and Find books are also based on finding specific items in a busy background and are very popular with kids. Find It! buries small objects in tubes filled with colorful pellets.

The key is to choose activities that meet the individual where they are and then push them to go farther, at their pace, to keep moving forward. This is the just-right challenge. Here are a few strategies that I use in therapy when working on these skills with kids and games:
  • Start slow. Give only a few of the pieces that the individual will need as choices. Sometimes you might start with only two or three. For instance if you are assembling a Lego model, give the person three pieces to choose from, one of them being the piece they will need. Of course you will always have to be one step ahead of them so that you are offering what they need as one of the choices. When this is easy, offer four pieces, then five, etc. Work your way up as fast/slow as they need to go to succeed. If using a bingo game, start with a card with a 3 X 3 grid, then go to a 4 X 4, then 5 X 5, etc. Upping it only after they are successful finding patterns at the current level. Use a 6 image Spot It! game before moving to an 8 image game.
  • Show them what they will be looking for. If they are going to find an embedded pattern, such as with bingo, tic-tac-toe, or Bounce Off, show them what a win will look like. Line up the markers in the exact position(s). Then embed a win on a card with extra pieces around it and let them practice finding it that way before actually playing a game.
  • Start simple with an exact copy. If you are looking for an image in a crowded background, such as with a search and find book, start with images that will look exactly like the image they show you to find. Sometimes they will show you a character to find, but that character will be doing something different in the picture (for instance swimming where you only see half of the image, instead of sitting). Sometimes characters are dressed differently. Or they will show you a picture of a chair but in the busy background it will actually be a silhouette, or in a different orientation, so shown from a different perspective. Move to these kinds of matches after they are successful at the exact ones.
  • Block out extra background that is not necessary and gradually add it back in. For instance, Q Bitz has 16 cubes that must be placed in a tray in a particular order to replicate a pattern. If necessary I will block out the whole pattern except one cube. Then we usually move to looking at one line or column at a time. Then move to letting the whole pattern show that you have already worked on. Work your way to showing the whole pattern card without anything blocked out. I usually use plain white paper to block out and I typically have paper with these shapes cut out that I leave in the boxes for the next time we use it, so I won't have to be grabbing at whatever is handy, and sometimes not very effective. Q-Bitz also incorporates other visual perceptual skills, so might not be where you would want to start.
  • Make a pattern card of what they are looking for. For instance, I usually start bingo games with a horizontal win, then move to vertical, then diagonal, then horizontal and vertical, then any way. I will copy the bingo card in black and white and color in a horizontal win with a bright yellow marker. We will keep that next to us as we play a game to remind us what we are looking for during a horizontal game. Remove it after they have mastered it.
  • Show them a 3D model. if they are looking at a 2D model but need to find a matching 3D model, I will show them the same 3D model (if I have one). I SPY Dig In, a very popular game with kids, is a good example. There are 32 4-piece sets of different shapes, 128 small pieces in all. If kids are overwhelmed by the 128 pieces I will start by using fewer pieces or play on a flat surface so there is only one layer, and/or separate out one of what they are looking for so they can refer to it as they look.    
Below are some games that feature figure ground that I have blogged about. Most also incorporate other visual perceptual skills along with figure ground, such as visual form constancy, visual closure and spatial orientation. Click on the links below to check them out.

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