Multisensory Learning: What’s Behind the Term
Multisensory learning is an approach that helps you perceive and communicate information from multiple senses simultaneously through different perceptual channels. First, this concept may seem challenging, but after getting deeper into this topic, you will find out that implementing it into it is as easy as entering the Bizzo’ VIP casino club.
Where It All Began
In 1935, psychologists Samuel Orton and Anna Jingen defined the concept of multisensory learning. They pioneered a program to help struggling readers. They included multisensory exercises to teach the connections between letters and sounds and the rules of phonetics. This structured approach helped students break down reading and spelling into small lessons and then improve step by step. In this way they mastered one skill before moving on to the next.
Multisensory activities engage multiple areas of the brain. To understand how multisensory learning works, it’s important to understand how the mind works. The human brain has evolved to learn and grow in a multisensory environment. For this reason, all brain functions are interconnected. Humans know how to do best when directions engage multiple senses. Many students rely on some senses more than others, so a variety of multisensory activities helps children absorb material.
Multisensory learning strategies are related to more established educational methods-for example, Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, which looks at intelligence in a variety of settings rather than as the dominance of one general ability. That is, each person has several types of intelligence, but three or four usually dominate.
Multisensory learning is an offshoot of person-centered learning, that is, the process of harmonious personal development, where the child feels part of the process. It is most often used at younger ages – early childhood, preschool and primary school. Although the format is available for any age.
Multisensory Learning Research
Cognitive psychologist Richard Mayer investigated the complex effects of sensory stimuli on learning. He divided participants into three groups: the first received information visually, the second by hearing, and the third used both methods. The latter remembered and reproduced information in more detail than the others.
Barry Smith, head of the School of Advanced Studies at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, argues that the senses work together, and in this manifests multisensory. That is, for example, we sense smells in two ways: externally, when we inhale the aroma of a bun, and internally, when we exhale and know whether to eat it. Another example: when we hear a sound, we engage not only our ears but also our eyes, which search for the source of that sound.
A 2018 cognitive science study showed that children with the strongest literacy skills had more interaction between different areas of the brain. It took place using fMRI technology, which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.
How Multisensory Learning Works
Depending on the leading channel of perception, children can be divided into audial, visual, kinesthetic and discrete. When selecting learning materials, it’s important to take into account the peculiarities of perception, and a regular change of tasks to different channels will help to adjust the attention of each child. Multisensory learning influences the sensory and thus helps to concentrate and retain attention, activate imagination and thinking.
The multisensory approach is based on multi-sensory perception. This means that all or some combination of visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory and tactile senses can be engaged simultaneously. Another name for this system is “hear-see-feel”. There can be any number of these combinations and in any order. In general, they can be used in any lesson.
Tips for Parents
Parents can help children set up spaces for better comprehension:
- Materials for the alphabet and numbers.
- Lego for fractions.
- Cards for foreign words.
- Substances for chemical experiments.
- Items for physics.
- Speakers for sound effects.
- Multimedia presentations with sounds, effects, pictures and videos to suit almost every class.
