Beyond the 5 classic senses (hearing, smell, touch, sight, taste), proprioception could be thought of as a 6th sense: it’s our ability to perceive ourselves without relying on vision. For some professionals, a dysfunction in this sense could have an impact on learning. While the medical world’s leading hypothesis for the origin of DYS disorders is neurological, a proprioceptive origin raises interesting questions…
Proprioception and learning
Proprioception is the conscious or unconscious perception of the position of different body parts without the help of sight. It relies on millions of sensory receptors located in our muscles, skin, tendons, ligaments, and joints, which send signals to the brain to build this “body schema.”
In the womb, the foetus’s brain already takes control of stretching and curling movements. Through movement, the child gradually learns to picture themselves, first roughly (around age 3) then fully (around age 11-12). After that, it keeps “updating itself,” evolving with growth, weight changes, injuries, and so on.
Motor habits are built on automatic, proprioceptive movements. Good proprioception is essential for maintaining posture, being coordinated, writing legibly, walking in a straight line, dancing in rhythm, playing a musical instrument, and more.
According to Professor JP Roll of the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), this 6th sense is “the primary sense, the one that gives meaning to the other senses.” Constantly connected to them, it influences how they work and tells the brain where they sit within the body.
Cognitive disorders associated with dysproprioception
Any dysfunction in proprioception leads to postural problems: the child thinks they’re sitting up straight when in fact they’re slouched. It also causes spatial localisation difficulties, behind clumsiness, trouble catching objects, motion sickness, discomfort in crowds, and more.
But dysproprioception may also create perceptual anomalies: information from the 5 senses is no longer organised in sync, generating a constant state of alertness. With a brain overwhelmed by sensory data that’s hard to process, the child will unconsciously filter some of it out, even when it’s useful.
Yet these filtered-out auditory and visual cues could help explain certain learning disorders: for example, these “blind spots” can hinder a student learning to read, unable to guess a word when they can only see part of it (dyslexia, dysorthographia); poor fine motor control and poor awareness of hand and finger position, as well as of the line being drawn, can hinder a student learning to write (dysgraphia)…
Don’t hesitate to discuss the link between dysproprioception and learning disorders with the specialists on the Ora-Visio platform: proprioceptive treatment might just help your child, alongside more conventional rehabilitation through speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, or psychology…
