Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD

Did you every play Marco Polo as a child? I used to love closing my eyes and spinning around faster and faster when I was ‘It’. Now imagine playing that game in the middle of a busy intersection. Cars are honking, dogs are barking, siren sounds get closer, and people are yelling. You are ‘It’ and are trying to listen to the where ‘Polo’ is coming from. For a student that is hypersensitive to sound, touch, and light, the world is a chaotic place. As a result, new surroundings can be very disorienting for them. Some label such sensory hypersensitivity as sensory integration dysfunction (SID).

The label of sensory integration disorder may come as a welcome relief to some parents who want an explanation for why their child has not reached certain milestones, like walking or talking. As parents, it is instinctive to worry that something may be wrong with our child. We view Bobby obsessively lining up cars in a row as a symptom of Autistic Spectrum, and Daisy mixing up words as dyslexic. Yet, does a label like SID actually help parents? Although it is a ‘condition’ identified by some health practitioners, there are many psychologists and neurologists who think that the label of SID is actually doing a disservice to parents. I will outline several reasons for why this is the case. The first issue is that the difficulties associated with SID reflect a neurodevelopmental immaturity, rather than a distinct disorder. The absence of adults receiving a diagnosis of SID begs the question of whether in some cases, the child might outgrow the symptoms naturally without the need for expensive and unproven treatments. The next point is related to this issue as sensory hypersensitivity is a symptom of other disorders such as dyspraxia, ADHD, and Autistic Spectrum. A label of SID might falsely lead to parent to feel comforted that their child is receiving support, when more serious problems might be going undiagnosed, and as a result, untreated or supported. Finally, there are very few published clinical trials on either the diagnosis of SID or the treatment of it. Those that are published have been criticized as flawed research, due to small samples and heterogeneous samples (ie, including students with ADHD, ASD, in the sample). It appears then while the symptoms of SID are indeed real, they can point to more serious disorders which merit diagnosis and treatment.

In the last few years, there have been various claims in the media on how simple exercises like jumping jacks and balancing can make children smarter.  In the UK, it was a matter of heated debate when a psychologist suggested that such exercise can actually improve reading skills. So is there any basis to these claims?

Well, yes and no. Let’s first look at the evidence for whether motor skills improve as a result of these exercises. If the exercise is simple like skipping, then you notice improvement in skipping skills very quickly. However, if the exercise is relatively complicated like hockey-puck shooting, then there is very little improvement, even after over 1000 practices!

What about learning? In a recent study, I asked students with learning difficulties and motor problems to take part in a 13-week exercise program. In addition to Brain Gym, they also did different balancing exercises, as well as trained their fine and gross motor skills.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that these students had better motor skills compared to the group that did not take part in this exercise program. However, these increased motor skills did not result in better reading and math scores! These students were still struggling in their academic attainments.

What does this mean? While I am certainly not discouraging exercise, this study, and a growing number like this, illustrate that it’s not enough to ask students to do some jumping jacks and skipping if we actually want to help them do better in the classroom.

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