Visual Memory Significantly Related to
Mathematics Achievement

Visual perception refers to the process of interpreting and organizing visual information. Visual perceptual skill is often subdivided into areas such as visual discrimination and visual memory. Visual discrimination involves the ability to attend to and identify a figure's distinguishing features and details, such as shape, orientation, color and size. Visual memory refers to the ability to remember a visual image.

One hundred seventy-one children with a mean age of 10.08 years participated in a study by Meghan E. Geiger et al. This study, conducted at the Ohio State University College of Optometry, was designed to determine whether or not performance on tests of visual perception could predict the children with poor current achievement in mathematics. Controls for age and verbal cognitive ability were included in all regression analyses because the failure to control for cognitive ability has been a criticism of some literature investigating the relation between visual and academic skills.

Geiger et al. concluded: "poor visual perceptual ability is significantly related to poor achievement in mathematics, even when controlling for verbal cognitive ability. Therefore, visual perceptual ability, and particularly visual memory, should be considered to be amongst the skills that are significantly related to mathematics achievement."