When you think ‘tactile learning’, you think braille right? Running your finger across a series of bumps, or raised dots, and mentally converting that into language. Well, sure. But as amazing as that is, there’s more to this phrase.
This is where you learn by doing.
For the sake of clarity, I’m not talking about learning a manual skill; I’m talking about learning new knowledge.
Physical movement, somehow, allows you to reach a deeper cognitive level with regards to the concepts that you’re trying to learn. Physical movement, which involves touching and handling things and materials, can help you remember the information better.
This could be, for example, actively drawing out a ‘journey map’ of the concept.
Another term implied in tactile learning is kinesthetic.
There is a semantic difference between the two. ‘Tactile’ involves sensory information associated with touch whereas ‘kinesthetic’ involves sensory information associated with movement, more specifically proprioceptive sensory information, or internal motion detectors.
So, we’re talking about tactile-kinesthetic learning.
Internet searches will garner sites saying this as a learning style. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to triage students into learning styles.
In tactile-kinesthetic learning, it’s invariably part of a multi-sensory experience. So, in addition to touch and proprioception, the learner is processing visual and/or auditory information that pertains to the topic.
In biology, for example, the instructor can have students act out a biological process.
Let’s say the instructor is trying to teach about serum lipoproteins (HDL and LDL) and what they do in the body. And let’s say there are about 100 students in a medium-sized auditorium. You can produce a two act play and be the director of that play.
Women volunteers “act” as specific proteins involved in the biological process. So, for example, Jane will act as apoB-100, an important component in VLDL, the precursor to LDL. Men volunteers “act” as metabolites, such as sugars and fats. So, for example, Jack will act as sugar. Once you picked all the students that would represent each of the molecules involved in biological process, you can then work through the events in the classroom as they would occur in the body. The aisle separating two parts of the auditorium can represent the digestive system. The stage, where the instructor stands, can be divided into liver and circulatory system. The students then pantomime ingestion, and then digestion, and then absorption of food nutrients. Under the prompting of the instructor, the molecules undergo metabolism (molecular transformation) and re-distribution in the body. LDL particles involve at least four different types of molecules. Hence, the four respective students huddle together, shuffling around stage in unison.
The students are physically acting out a metabolic process in human physiology. The instructor verbally directs the scene. The seated students see the physiological events occurring in front of them. So, in this theatrical display, the instructor has allowed students to pretend to be part of this biological event.
This multi-sensory experience gets incorporated into memory more fully than if it were a simple verbal presentation.
What is the neuroscience behind tactile-kinesthetic learning?
Regarding the sensation of touch, there are four main kinds of mechanoreceptors in our skin surface. These mechanoreceptors are like transducer systems – sensors – with names like rock bands: Merkel Discs, Meissner Corpuscles, Ruffini Endings and Pacinian Corpuscles. The prefix “mechano” means that the receptor responds to mechanical changes. So, any physical change in pressure or vibration, such as touching, stretching and moving, can trigger these receptors to send info to the brain. Mechanical distortion of any kind (i.e. picking up your pencil) is registered by these specialized sensors in the skin.
Merkel Discs and Meissner Corpuscles, both, respond to light touch. They are close to the skin surface. They can detect low-frequency vibration. Ruffini Endings respond to stretching. They are a little deeper below the surface of the skin. Pacinian Corpuscles are also found deep below the skin surface – well into the dermal layers. A greater mechanical distortion is required for these sensors to be activated. A higher frequency of vibrations is needed to set off the Pacinian Corpuscles.
So, these mechanoreceptors cover the whole gamut of physical touch sensations, providing the brain with a rich source of sensory information.
Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s welcome Merkel Disc and the Ruffini Endings! These two types of touch sensors are hardwired to so-called slow adapting nerve fibers. They can register an ongoing sensory event. This would be like holding a pencil and continually feeling the pencil in your hands, even when you are completely still and don’t move.
The action of grabbing the pencil on both ends and snapping it in half, on the other hand, is dynamic and there are moment-by-moment pressure changes in the hands and fingers. There are rapid subtle changes in the tactile sensations moment-by-moment. These dynamic changes are recognized by the Meissner Corpuscles and the Pacinian Corpuscles. They activate so-called fast-adapting nerve fibers. So, they register change. If you hold the pencil still, they do not sense that you’re holding anything, but if you try to break the pencil, they will feel the increased pressure on the pencil and then the reverberations at break point.
When you think of touch, you think of your fingers, right?
The fingers aren’t the only human parts that sense touch. The fingers are indeed packed with these mechanoreceptors, so, yes, they are highly adapted to sensing touch.
Your entire integumentary system – this refers to your skin – has mechanoreceptors that can detect touch. Our hands and fingers are highly equipped to “notice” things by feel. They practice every day. Or, at least, you’re more conscious of what your fingers touch. Your brain contains Big Data on the sensory world of touch, an infinite store of information of things that you’ve purposefully, or accidently, touched.
Your brain incessantly processes the many inputs from your fingers, and from other parts of your skin, including bumping into fellow “cholesterol molecules” in the LDL particles during the Lipoprotein Play. Your unconscious brain stores massive amounts of sensory data.
Pick up the pencil. Is the object smooth with a sharp edge, or is it rough and bumpy? You use these sensations through our fingers, ask these questions and file the answers – all day long without overtly thinking about them.
Your entire skin surface receives signals. Most signals, however, are hardly noticeable. You spend most of your live ignoring signals from rather large areas of your body. You tend to “forget” that you have your shoes on or “forget” that you’re seating in a chair. Fast-adapting mechanoreceptors are partly responsible for this desensitization. Curiously, if the lecturer is really boring you begin to notice how uncomfortable the chair has become.
You can train your attention to sense your shoes and clothing using mindful exercises. Similarly, as you rehearse the events of the day, you can re-live the experience of a cholesterol molecule entering the circulation and become part of the LDL particle, solidifying the learning.
Your normal responsivity to touch is due to the presence of these mechanoreceptors, fast- and slow adapting. And due to your attention to these signals. You can train your perceptual ability by consciously attending to touch and by defining it using words, creating a neurolinguistic link. You can heighten your perceptual acuity for touch.
Consider the biological concept of LDL uptake into cells. Like opening a door and entering the house. Try it. Use your key and open your front door and enter the house. The house is your cell. The door is the transporting allowing you, the LDL particle, to enter. Have students do this in class. Have another student verbally describe the process.
“We are an LDL particle. We enter the vascular cell by first binding to a receptor. The vascular cell makes the receptor and places it at the outside surface of the cell. It is a transmembrane protein called the LDL receptor…”
During which the student actors mimic their way through the scene by touching their own heads (“I am LDL”), touching door (= receptor), entering room/leaving class (= cellular uptake). Simply add detail as required by the level of the students.
The term haptic describes certain sensations that are experienced through BOTH touch and movement. You are more familiar with the term tactile. Sensations that are tactile – by strict definition – are those experiences felt through touch alone.
So, there are the tactile sensations, which are experienced through the sense of touch.
Then, there are the kinesthetic sensations, which are experienced through proprioception.
The term haptic is used when referring to the integration of these two sensory modalities. It is a weird word. And may never take hold in the popular media. That’s why you see the phrase tactile-kinesthetic, to refer to haptic. Six syllables certainly sound more impressive that two.
Active exploration of your surroundings uses haptic perception. It’s dark in the house, the power is out, you can’t see and you are searching for that mini flashlight on a key ring. You open the junk drawer that contains all sorts of stuff. As your hands move about touching odd things, you make conscious and unconscious changes in your exploration until you come upon the target, the flashlight.
The kinesthetic component to haptic perception is highly integrated with touch. You reach the back of the drawer, you adjust your hand to search sideways and up towards the front of the drawer. The fine-tuned adjustments of your hand are due to proprioception. This term is like perception. The “proprio” prefix refers to sensing where your hand is in space at any given moment.
This “knowing” can be with or without conscious awareness of the task. Tactile perception is passive. It technically refers to only the touch part of sensations
The learner can put their attention to these activities and make themselves more aware of their sensory experiences, particularly while acting out a biological phenomenon, in order to make these experiences more re-memorable. At least, until test-time.
The tactile and proprioceptive signals largely end up in the Parietal Lobe of the brain. Note that the auditory signals go to the Temporal Lobe, and the visual signals go to the Occipital Lobe. By engaging the greater part of the sensory grid, there is a memory trace that is likely less fragile and with rehearsal can be kept in long term storage for later retrieval.
Resources
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences Howard Gardner
The Scientific Status of Learning Styles Theories
Daniel T. Willingham, Elizabeth M. Hughes, and David G. Dobolyi
Teaching of Psychology
2015; volume 42; pages 266-271