Kinesthetic memory

• TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Cognition; developmental psychology; learning; memory; sensation and perception; social psychology

Kinesthetic memory refers to how muscles remember movements and is essential for normal motor activity and learning.

Introduction

Movement is central to sustaining life and fostering learning. Humans learn by kinesthetic, visual, or auditory methods, known as modalities, of processing sensory information. Each learning style engages a specific part of the brain to acquire, process, and store data. Educators aim to develop teaching objectives compatible with students’ learning styles. Around 65 percent of people tend to learn best with visual memory, 20 percent through auditory memory, and up to 15 percent with kinesthetic memory.

Kinesthetic memories are primarily stored in the cerebellum. This part of the brain has less risk for injury than the neocortex and hippocampus, which are involved in visual and auditory learning processes. Although kinesthetic memory is basic to the motions involved in writing, it is often ineffective for people attempting to comprehend academic topics. Kinesthetic types of learning are more suitable for mastering physical movements in sports and dance and in performance control, such as playing instruments or singing.

Kinesthetic memory is fundamental to motor activity. Muscles in people and animals recall previous movements according to how body parts such as joints, bones, ligaments, and tendons interact and are positioned. This innate memory of relationships and sequences is the basis of motor skills such as writing or riding a bicycle. Because the brain relies on kinesthetic memory, it does not have to concentrate on how to move body parts. Instead, the brain can be focused on more complex thought processes and enhancement or refinement of movements.

Proprioception, the unconscious knowledge of body placement and a sense of the space it occupies, benefits from kinesthetic memory. Bodies can coordinate sensory and motor functions because of proprioception so that reflexes in response to stimuli can occur. These innate motor abilities help most organisms to trust that their bodies will behave as expected.

People have been aware of elements of kinesthetic memory since the late nineteenth century. Teacher Anne Sullivan used tactile methods to teach Helen Keller words. Keller, who was blind, deaf, and mute, touched objects, and kinesthetic sensations guided her to remember meanings. Educators have recognized the merits of kinesthetic learning in assisting students, both children and adults, with reading difficulties. Kinesthetic memory has also been incorporated into physical therapies.

Measuring Memory

Kinesthetic memory is crucial for people to function proficiently in their surroundings. Measurement of kinesthetic memory is limited by clinical tools and procedures. Researchers are attempting to develop suitable tests to comprehend the role of kinesthetic memory in maintaining normal motor control for physical movement. Psychologists Judith Laszlo and Phillip Bairstow designed a ramp device that measures motor development and kinesthetic acuity in subjects’ upper extremities but not in specific joints. Kinesthetic acuity is how well people can describe the position of their body parts when their vision is obscured.

Some investigators considered Laszlo and Bairstow’s measurement method insufficient to examine some severely neurologically impaired patients, and it was revised to gauge nervous system proprioceptive deficiencies. Researchers at the University of Michigan-Flint’s Physical Therapy Laboratory for Cumulative Trauma Disorders adjusted ramp angles of laboratory devices in an attempt to create a better kinesthetic testing tool.

Kinesthetic studies examine such variables as gender and age and how they affect perception and short- and long-term kinesthetic memory. Results are applied to create more compatible learning devices and techniques that enhance information retention and recollection. Researchers sometimes assess how the vibration of tendons and muscles or anesthesia of joints affects movement perceptions. Studies evaluate how kinesthetic stimuli affect awareness of size, length, and distance.

Kinesthetic memory tests indicate that kinesthetic performance varies according to brain characteristics and changes. Some tests involve tracing patterns at intervals during one week. Subjects are evaluated for how accurate their perceptions and memory of the required movements are from one testing session to the next. Such studies have shown that as people age, their kinesthetic memory capabilities decline. Mental health professionals seek treatment for brain injuries that result in ideomotor apraxia, memory loss for sequential movements, and ideational apraxia, the breakdown of movement thought.

Intellectual Applications

Some educational specialists hypothesize that people with dyslexia might lack sufficient kinesthetic memory to recognize and form words. Some dyslexia treatments involve strengthening neural pathways with physical activity to reinforce kinesthetic memory. As a result, some processes become instinctive, and the brain can concentrate on understanding academic material and behaving creatively.

Teachers can help students acquire cursive handwriting skills by practicing unisensory kinesthetic trace techniques. Touch is the only sense students are permitted to use with this method, which develops kinesthetic memory for future writing. Blindfolded students trace letters with their fingers in a quiet environment. They repeat these hand and arm movements to form letters, then words. Muscular memories of these movements and body positions improve motor control for writing.

Kinesthetic-tactile methods are applied with some visual and auditory learning styles. In 1943, Grace Fernald introduced her method, VAKT, which used visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile tasks simultaneously during stages of tracing, writing, and pronouncing. Margaret Taylor Smith established the Multisensory Teaching Approach (MTA). Beth Slingerland created the Slingerland Approach, which integrates all sensory learning styles, including kinesthetic motor skills.

Memorization is a fundamental part of musical activities. Singers rely on the kinesthetic memory of throat muscles to achieve their desired vocal range and performance. Musicians develop kinesthetic memory skills by practicing pieces without visual cues to avoid memory lapses due to performance anxiety. Panic or nervousness can disrupt kinesthetic memories unless performers develop methods to deal with their fears or excitement.

Studies indicate that kinesthetic memory provokes signals that influence people’s memory. In particular, one study investigated how cues acquired during a learning process affect how people retain memories. Researchers focused on how people interacted with computers, specifically how the use of a pointing device, such as a mouse, and touchscreens affected the retention of information viewed on computer screens. Pressing touchscreens, for instance, to control information contributed to increased spatial memory.

Twenty-first-century research into kinesthetic memory continued to highlight its importance. Engaging the body through movement or touch while performing cognitive functions or learning new information can increase recall by aiding memory consolidation and creating neural connections. While this influence is strongest with hands-on, kinesthetic learners, it has shown to be beneficial for individuals with a range of learning styles. Using multiple senses, like touch and physical movement, during learning may activate more areas of the brain and create stronger recall. Other research into memory integration and kinesthetic learning involves drawing, walking, and the application of virtual reality in learning.

Body Intelligence

Kinesthetic memory guides children to develop control over their bodies. Jay A. Seitz emphasized that conventional intellectual assessments of children ignore bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. He argued that kinesthetic education, particularly in the mastery of aesthetic movements, is essential to balance traditional Western formal education, which focuses on cognitive-linguistic and logical-numerical skills. Many educators consider those skills superior to other means of expressing intelligence. Seitz stated that kinesthetic skills such as those developed by dance have significant cognitive aspects that can enhance academic curricula and children’s intellectual growth.

Jean Piaget stressed that movement is an important factor in children’s early learning development. Infants’ sensorimotor experiences provide foundational knowledge for speech. Howard Gardner built on Piaget’s premise by focusing on how people become skilled in coordinating their movements, manipulating items, and managing situations competently, what he terms bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.

Kinesthetic memory is one of three main cognitive skills associated with bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Muscle memory allows people to use their bodies artistically to perform desired motion patterns, imitate movements, and create new nonverbal physical expressions. Motor logic and kinesthetic awareness supplement kinesthetic memory and regulate neuromuscular organization and presentation in such physical forms as rhythmic movement sequences and posture. Muscles and tendons have sensory receptors that aid kinesthetic awareness.

Seitz investigated how people use gestures to think and express themselves. He emphasized that movement is the product of intellectual activity and can be recorded in kinesic language, such as choreography, which describes dance sequences. Seitz conducted a qualitative and quantitative analysis of formal and informal dance classes to determine how children use kinesthetic sense and memory and motor logic to learn increasingly complicated dance routines. He noted that children aged three to four years have an awareness of movement dynamics such as rhythm and balance.

After being taught simple choreography, such as a butterfly-shaped pattern, children were asked to repeat the pattern five minutes later for a kinesthetic memory test. They were also asked to demonstrate a possible final gesture to a pantomime, such as pretending to throw a ball, as a motor logic test. The children were also shown pictures of people, structures, or items and asked to use their bodies to show what movements they associated with the images. All tests were recorded to assess how children copied, created, or finished movements or the degree to which they failed.

Some children who lack motor skill competence have developmental coordination disorder (DCD), which was first classified in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1994, DSM-IV) and is included in the fifth edition, DSM-V-TR (2022). Authorities disagree on whether DCD is caused by kinesthetic or visual perceptual dysfunction. Some tests reveal that children who have DCD might not kinesthetically rehearse memories they acquire visually. Laszlo and Bairstow developed kinesthetic sensitivity tests to assess subjects’ motor skills in processing information such as the position and movement of limbs. Kinesthetic perceptual problems result in clumsy movements. Therapists advocating the kinesthetic training approach encourage children to practice movements and develop better body awareness to refine motor skills.

Therapy

Kinesthetic memory contributes to physical fitness and the prevention of injuries. Researchers in kinesiology and biomechanics study how people move and incorporate kinesthetic concepts. Many athletes participate in Prolates, or progressive Pilates, which is a kinesthetically based conditioning program designed to achieve a balance of muscle systems and body awareness of sensations and spatial location. Prolates practitioners view the human body as a unified collection of connected parts that must smoothly function together to achieve coordination, flexibility, and efficiency and to reduce stress.

This exercise program develops the mind-body relationship with movement visualization and concentration skills practice so people can instinctively sense how to fix athletic problems using appropriate muscles instead of repeatedly rehearsing mechanics. Prolates require participants to achieve control of their center of gravity during diverse movements, thus refining kinesthetic memory. Athletes automatically adjust their physical stance when details about muscles are conveyed to the brain by proprioceptors, which are enhanced by Prolates.

Aquatic proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) is a movement therapy. This treatment helps individuals with fibromyalgia to learn appropriate movement patterns to replace damaging behaviors such as clenching teeth, raising shoulders, and other excessive and unconscious muscle contractions and tensions that people use to deal with chronic pain and emotional stimuli. They also learn more efficient breathing techniques.

Erich Fromm encouraged the use of visual kinesthetic dissociation (V/KD), which is a therapy designed to help patients attain detachment from kinesthetic memories acquired traumatically through physical abuse or rape. Therapists initiate V/KD by asking patients to act as observers, not participants, as though they are watching a movie, not acting in it, as they recall the traumatic experiences in their imagination. By paying attention to visual and auditory cues, patients gradually release kinesthetic memories. Sometimes, therapists ask the patients to play the scenes backward to reinforce non-kinesthetic memories and develop sensations of being empowered and competent.

Bibliography

Crawley, Sharon J. Remediating Reading Difficulties. 6th ed., McGraw, 2012.

Floyd, R. T. Manual of Structural Kinesiology. 22nd ed., McGraw, 2024.

Jamison, Lynette, and David Ogden. Aquatic Therapy Using PNF Patterns. Therapy Skill Builders, 1994.

Jawed, Soyiba, et al. “Classification of Visual and Non-Visual Learners Using Electroencephalographic Alpha and Gamma Activities.” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 13, no. 86, 2019. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00086. Accessed 18 Oct. 2024.

Laszlo, Judith I., and Phillip J. Bairstow. Perceptual Motor Behavior: Developmental Assessment and Therapy. Praeger, 1985.

Messing, Lynn, and Ruth Campbell, eds. Gesture, Speech, and Sign. Oxford UP, 2004.

Seitz, Jay A. “I Move . . . Therefore I Am.” Psychology Today, vol. 26 no. 2, 1993, pp. 50–55.

Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. "Kinesthetic Memory: Further Critical Reflections and Constructive Analyses." Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement, edited by Sabine C. Koch, et al. Benjamins, vol. 84., 2012, pp. 43–72.

Wing, Alan M., et al. Hand and Brain: The Neurophysiology and Psychology of Hand Movements. Academic Press, 1996.