VestibulOTherapy: Interventions supporting children in learning and communication

From the days of my youth, I have countless memories of rolling down hills, hanging from playground equipment, balancing on precarious precipices, falling off bicycles, and endless hours riding merry-go-rounds. Where did those opportunities go? It seems they have been replaced by safety consciousness and high-tech screens with visual images that are highly captivating and engaging, but deprive today's youth of physical activity that supports brain development. 

Background

A survey of Americans revealed that 1 in 20 U.S. children experience vestibular dysfunction, which often remains unidentified or untreated (Li et al., 2016). For some children, their vestibular sensation fails to register during activity, and vestibular maturation is further delayed by sedentary lifestyles. The children’s limited range of sensation and maturation leaves them without insight into their dysfunction. Evidence from contemporary science suggests these children may benefit from classroom or clinical vestibular interventions embedded into daily occupations to positively impact communication and learning. Without remediation, children with vestibular dysfunction may experience specific cognitive deficits, particularly in relation to spatial cognition (Besnard et al., 2015; Mast et al., 2014; Wiener-Vacher et al., 2013) and attributes of communication and learning, including attention, memory, and sequencing (Hitier et al., 2014; Kashfi et al., 2019; Koziol et al., 2014; Lopez et al., 2020; Mast et al., 2014).