Figure & Ground

About the Figure & Ground exercise

Finding one thing in a busy field is daily work: the right jar on a crowded shelf, a name in a column of small print, the house key on a ring of similar keys, a road sign among storefronts. After a stroke or a brain injury, or with visual perception changes, the background stops staying in the background, and every overlapping line competes for attention.

Figure and Ground is a free online figure-ground exercise. Overlapping outline shapes share one board in the same ink, and the person taps each target shape's outline to mark it, or counts every circle, square, and triangle one sweep at a time. Every round is a fresh board, timed from the first tap.

What Figure & Ground practices

Figure-ground perception

All the shapes are drawn in the same ink at the same line weight, so a target only stands out when the person follows its contour through the crossings.

Visual scanning

The field layout spreads overlap chains across the whole board, so finding every target means working the space systematically rather than settling on the densest knot.

Self-checking

Tapping an outline again unmarks it, and false positives are counted at the end, so deciding whether a marked shape really is the target is part of the round.

How the tool works and what it records

Two tasks: find the shape, a few of one target among others, and count sweep, three passes over one board for circles, then squares, then triangles. Free presets: gentle tangle (10 shapes, 5 targets), busy field (28 shapes), and count the shapes (30). Pro unlocks the dials: 4 to 40 shapes, 1 to 6 targets, light, medium, or heavy overlap, field or tangle layout, the classic trio or all 8 shapes, line weight from 0.5 to 1.2, random rotation, varied sizes, and a target count hint. Large print is free.

Tap an outline to mark it and again to unmark; the timer starts on the first tap and pauses between count sweeps. Results show time, found out of targets, and false positives, and the board recolors found, missed, and wrongly marked shapes. A free account allows 5 rounds a day per tool. Printing is free; Pro removes the cap, saves a session log, and exports a PDF worksheet with an answer key.

Screen or paper?

The screen suits fast feedback: missed shapes are revealed in place rather than lost inside a wrong total, false positives are counted, and every board is new. Paper suits tracing, where the person runs a finger or a colored pencil along each contour, and the printed set uses drawn scenes rather than generated outlines. It also works without a device or wifi.

The printable version is the Visual Figure-Ground worksheet set on rehabworksheets.com, and there is a free figure ground worksheet to try first, with no email required.

Using it well

• Start with the gentle tangle. Ten shapes, five targets, light overlap, and the count hint on: the person knows how many to find and the knot is small. Move to busy field once most rounds finish with no misses.
• Turn the count hint off to see completion. With the hint on, the marked counter reads 3 of 5 and tells the person when to stop. Without it, finishing depends on their own judgement that the whole field has been searched.
• Change one dial at a time. Thinner lines, heavier overlap, more shapes, rotation, and varied sizes each make the board harder in a different way. Adjusting one per session keeps a slower or less accurate round explainable.
• Adapt for a weak hand. Large-print mode thickens every line and widens the tap tolerance around each outline. If tapping is still hard, the person can point while a partner taps, or the board can be printed and marked with a pen.

Common questions