Realizing a little bit about the process should help us to understand that there is a lot going on at a base level. Additionally, a transformation (neuroplasticity) has to take place. Unfortunately, problems can occur with either.
The fundamentals can be weak or neuroplasticity can be inhibited.
Think of the base level as the way our brains operate. We think using a number of lower level skills. I’ll call these skills micro-skills. The sum total of these micro-skills makes up our intelligence. And since each and every one of us has different strengths and weaknesses in each of these micro-skills, we are all intelligent in different ways.
Add to that that we all tend to use each micro-skill in different ways and we quickly see that this thing we call thinking and intelligence is not at all universally uniform. It is different for everyone.
These micro-skills can be categorized as either auditory, visual, or kinesthetic.
Within the auditory skills, we have micro-skills such as:
- Auditory discrimination, which allows us to differentiate between sounds.
- Auditory closure, which allows us to process sounds more quickly
- Auditory memory, which allows us to hear those sounds internally in our mind, aiding in overall memory as well as associating them with meaning.
These are predominantly functions of the brain, not the ears.
We then have the visual micro-skills such as:
These are also predominantly functions of the brain, not the eyes.
And then finally there are the kinesthetic micro-skills. These are the most overlooked yet probably the most important intelligence skills. There are a variety of reasons why these kinesthetic skills are so important, but for now let’s quickly talk about one, spatial awareness.
Spatial memory and proprioception are our brains strongest form of memory. Shortly after we are born, we first and foremost learn to understand our bodies and their surroundings. Babies, when they first begin to learn, start working immediately on determining “what is me, and what is not me”. They, of course, do this by sticking things in their mouth. “If I bit this toe it hurts, must be me”.
Our spatial understands grow quickly and form the foundation for our other forms of learning. Everything integrates with the spatial. Our visual and auditory systems both interpret space constantly. Even though most of us don’t recognize that we do this. We see where things are and we also hear where they are. We recalculate constantly when moving our bodies in relation to those things.
Spatial recognition and proprioception (our awareness of our bodies position in space) are what tie the other major senses together. The auditory, the visual, and even the vestibular are perceived both individually and as a whole in the emergent spatial sense. And therefore, it is this kinesthetic related spatial perception that creates the unity between our senses.
Our spatial awareness and proprioceptive senses are critical. Without them our other senses can only operate independently, not as a unified learning system. And without this unified, whole body learning, learning is confusing and stifled, if not impossible.
Yet, for some odd reason, our education system seems to ignore this all to important kinesthetic aspect of learning. Students are all but strapped to their desks and not allowed to move. Eliminating their ability to build their brains with the kinesthetic.