By kinesthetic differentiation ability the technical language understands the ability of humans to judge a movement sequence with regard to its quality and to dose it accordingly. This ability enables people to perform their movements economically, safely, and accurately (differentiated) and to adapt them to the situation at hand. The goal is to achieve a high-quality movement performance that is increasingly finely coordinated as its quality improves, thus enabling appropriate force dosage and target adaptation.
What is the ability to differentiate?
Differentiation ability means that a person is able to control motor skills situationally based on a continuous exchange of information about the instantaneous position of movement. A person’s ability to differentiate is based on kinesthetic information, which controls the person’s unconscious but orderly sense of movement by means of the responsible area of the brain. The word kinesthetic goes back to the ancient Greek terms kineō (to move) and aisthēsis (experience, perception). A well-developed coordination ability is a decisive prerequisite for the ability to balance and rhythm, which checks the incoming sensory information in a differentiated manner for what is important, forwards this information to the responsible brain area and, after implementation, adjusts the movement sequences to it in a dosed manner. Humans are able to control motor skills situationally on the basis of a constant exchange of information about the current movement position. Examples of this differentiation ability include various movement sequences such as catching a ball, clapping, dancing, or juggling objects.
Function and task
Differentiation ability is one of the most important coordinative abilities. It functions only in a balanced interaction with the orientation ability, reaction ability, rhythmization ability, balance ability, changeover ability, and coupling ability. Humans orient themselves to spatial conditions and changes and are able to adapt adequately to this situation. The kinesthetic information exchange that takes place with the responsible brain area enables him to react appropriately to this incoming sensory information and to implement it motorically. In addition, he has the ability to adapt his movement sequences to this altered, predetermined rhythm, to keep his body and his movement sequences in balance and to fine-tune them to each other motorically. His coupling ability allows him, at the end of this process, to synchronize all his movements or even partial movements in a spatially and temporally coordinated manner in order to achieve the desired target movement in the best possible way. The possibility of differentiation plays a superordinate role within these sensory abilities, since it is indispensable especially in the area of the increased performance level. In order to coordinate a movement in a differentiated way, a far-reaching reception of information and its processing is indispensable beforehand. The cerebellum with its kinesthetic analyzer plays a decisive role here, because it differentiates between information intake and information processing. An example from the field of sports: In order for the tennis player to be able to hit the center of the small tennis ball that is moving toward him at about 180 km/h across the tennis court, he must guide his racket optimally toward the approaching tennis ball. To achieve this goal, the position of the racket head in relation to the ball is crucial. The tennis player must use his force in a dosed manner based on his kinesthetic differentiation ability, which becomes one of the most important coordinative abilities with this movement sequence. There is a constant exchange of information about the current situation, the position correction and further, subsequent movement sequences. The more regularly these motor sequences are trained, the more densely the neurons involved in this movement process are interconnected in a finely tuned coordination of several centers of the cerebrum and cerebellum.
Diseases and disorders
The visual, phonematic, and melodic differentiation abilities are other sensory perceptions without which we would not be able to cope in daily life.Optical sensory perception is an indispensable prerequisite for learning to read and write. As a rule, we learn these skills at school. In this process, the children depend on a high precision of optical perception. At the beginning of the learning phase, the child concentrates on the technical and formal side of the learning process, since his ability is not yet so routinely developed as to allow this process to take place automatically without much effort. The automatic and accurate perception of visual modalities of written characters is a prerequisite to ensure the reading and writing process as a unity of motor skill and comprehension (processing of information in the brain). Phonematic differentiation ability enables people to pick out phonetic sounds within a word in order to understand the spoken word. The kinesthetic differentiation ability is responsible for reading and articulation and controls correct pronunciation. The melodic ability to differentiate enables people to evaluate sentences and words differently by means of melodic diction. If the various differentiation abilities are malformed or only insufficiently developed, the affected people show corresponding signs, for example a disturbed movement sequence, a lack of fine motor skills, a reading, writing or arithmetic disability as well as deficits in pronunciation. These missing or poorly developed skills can cause deep-rooted and long-lasting patterns of behavior in all areas of personal and social life in the affected individuals. For example, people with a reading and writing disability often suffer from insecurity and inferiority complexes because they are unable to perform at the same level as their peers. If fine motor skills are poorly developed, this deficit can cause discomfort in our daily lives, as we have to perform movements throughout the day, whether it is sports performance, typing on the computer, shopping or other everyday activities. The behavioral patterns of the affected individuals may deviate more or less significantly from the cultural, social and accepted guidelines. These deviations manifest themselves in various areas such as cognitive perception, impulse control, and affectivity. The resulting behavior patterns may be maladaptive, inflexible, and inappropriate. Affected individuals experience personal distress and a detrimental influence from their environment. A lack of ability to differentiate has far-reaching effects throughout people’s lives, affecting how they feel, think, perceive, respond to the environment, and relate to others.
