Sensation, Perception, and Motor Learning in Education

Sensation and Sensory Receptors

Simply put, sensations are basic experiences related, from a physiological point of view, to the activity of sensory receptors that allow us to experience or capture stimuli from both the external and internal environment (Goldstein, 1988). Sensation refers, therefore, to the mere reception of experiential information or the interplay we experience through the senses prior to a stimulus (Goldstein, 1988).

Types of Sensations

• Exteroceptive sensitivity: Captures stimuli from the outside world and the external qualities of one's own body.
• Interoceptive sensitivity: Provides information from the internal environment of the body, reflecting the state of organs and visceral functions (hunger, anxiety, physiological needs, etc.).
• Proprioceptive sensitivity: Gathers information regarding muscle stretching, body posture in space, motor activity, balance, and equilibrium:
  • Kinesthetic sensations: Inform about body position and its individual segments.
  • Vestibular sensations: Originating from the ear and vestibule, they govern balance reactions, changes in orientation, and equilibrium shifts.

The Process of Perception

Perception is the result of a higher-order process. It is elaborated from sensory data (the interaction and integration of sensations) and represents a primary mental activity of analysis and synthesis that enables the recognition and interpretation of received sensations based on memory data, prior experiences, attention, and motivation.

All knowledge of the external and internal environment comes from the decoding and interpretation of sensory messages. It establishes a state of consciousness regarding external stimuli, providing the foundation for learning.

Sensation and Perception in Motor Learning

• Stimulus: Elements, objects, or phenomena that provoke reactions through the senses (e.g., light, weight, cold).
• Receptor: The sensory organ responsible for capturing the stimulus and initiating the entire process.
• Afferent pathway: The neural pathway that connects the receptor to the central nervous system and transmits captured sensory information.
• Nervous center: The brain area where information is interpreted. Put simply, this is where sensory information is processed (perception) and the motor command directing movement is formed.
• Efferent pathway: The neural pathway linking the nervous center to the effector organ, sending the motor command that will produce the response.
• Effector: The organ responsible for executing the motor action.

Sensory Education Guidelines

Orientations that should direct educational interventions:

• Stimulate the senses to fully develop buffering and adaptation across all motor capabilities.
• Discover the sensory possibilities of our body, recognizing sensory organs and linking stimuli with their appropriate receptors. Children should be immersed in a stimulus-rich environment that activates all senses, maximizing the range of both daily and novel stimuli across all sensory pathways, especially those that are underused.
• Sensory refinement: Refine sensory quality and improve sensory thresholds through access to new sensations and subtle sensory nuances.
• Seek sensory interaction to promote intersensory coordination and competition for improved knowledge of oneself and the external world.
• Direct attention toward stimuli of interest to the child, bringing relevant signals into the foreground of conscious awareness.
• Recognize and discriminate sensations with greater detail, identifying the environmental objects and causes that produce them.
• Plan responses and progressively adjust motor actions according to received sensory data.
• Classify and organize received sensations, isolated or grouped according to similarities and differences.
• Foster expression and communication of everything felt and perceived.
• Express sensory perceptions and individual feelings with increasingly rich nuances.
• Use the expressive possibilities of the body to manifest internal states and perceptions.

Situations for Sensory Development

• Sensations and perceptions of the body:
  • Interoceptive awareness.
  • Proprioceptive awareness.
• Sensations and perceptions from interaction with others:
  • Sensory observation and exploration of one's own body and the bodies of others (peculiar features, individual characteristics, gender, height, body frame, posture, eye color, etc.).
• Sensations and perceptions related to time and space:
  • Spatial location.
  • Perspectives.
  • Rhythms.
  • Velocities.
  • Trajectories.
• Sensations and perceptions from interaction with objects:
  • Active use of all senses during manipulation.

Information Processing Perspective in Motor Tasks

From an explanatory information-processing perspective, motor behaviors and skill acquisition examine how information is transformed once it is captured as input, processed through decision-making mechanisms, and emitted as an output response.

To learn a motor task correctly, a student must be capable of completing four key stages:

1. Attending to relevant stimuli in the environment (perceptual mechanism: "What is happening?").
2. Selecting and planning the motor response appropriate for the situation (decision-making mechanism: "What should I do?").
3. Executing the movement correctly and sustaining it as required (execution mechanism: "How do I do it?").
4. Using feedback information provided by the response to evaluate the result and modify it if necessary.