The conceptual notion that children's visual perceptual skills may develop independently of their motor skills was addressed in this study. Visual perceptual abilities were evaluated in a group of children with spastic diplegia cerebral palsy and a group of normal children using the Motor-Free Visual Perceptual Test (MVPT) (Colarusso & Hammill, 1972) and the Test of Visual-Perceptual Skills (TVPS) (Gardner, 1982). The results indicated that the disabled children attained significantly lower mean perceptual quotient and perceptual age scores on both tests than a group of normal children matched for age and sex. In addition, the performance of the disabled children showed significantly lower mean percentile ranks on the TVPS than the normal group. Finally, high correlations (based on the perceptual quotient and perceptual age scores) of the TVPS and the MVPT scores were computed for both groups. The results are discussed with implications for future research.
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