The Role of Movement and Sensorial Stimuli for Therapy and Education. A Comparative Study

The following article looks at the role movement and sensorial stimuli do play in the educational approaches of Dr. Maria Montessori and Dr. Emmi Pikler as well as the Sensorial Integration and Psychomotor Therapy. The author of this paper has been studying, applying, and teaching all four approaches for many years and used her expertise in all four approaches to look at whether independent scientific research proves the effectiveness of movement and sensorial stimuli for reaching therapeutic as well as educational goals and to also provide scientific evidence for the fact that all four approaches focus on the role of these two factors, which means that this is a comparative study utilizing existing research papers. The methods of applying movement and sensorial stimuli in the four approaches mentioned above are being compared and linked to recent scientific findings concerning the role of movement and sensorial stimuli for the efficacy of education and therapy. This article compares the four approaches based on scientific research on the various methods as well as independent research which looks and the impact of movement and sensorial stimuli as well as a method of application and its effectiveness. It has been found that sensorial stimulation and movement are closely connected and that these play a major role in all four approaches although the methods of application are quite different. One example might be that the Montessori method purposefully teaches specific movements in specific ways while only Sensory integration therapy also utilizes passive movement as a sensorial stimulation. All four approaches rely on the self-motivation of the child and do not apply any kind of pressure.