Increasing Attention by Furniture Modification

Usual school furniture is aggressive on the proprioceptive system. As so, we decided to modify the usual school furniture by use of sloped desks, limb supports and specially-shaped chairs.

We studied the attention levels of 2 classes composed of 8-year-old children.

In one of them, we used the standard furniture and we equipped the other one with special furniture.

The difference in the results for the two classes lead us to conclude that the non aggressive proprioceptive system furniture can increase attention levels.

In the same study, we also evaluated the number of spelling mistakes and we observed that, before the special furniture, both classes had the same level of spelling mistakes. 4 months after that, the class equipped with special furniture reduced its mistakes 4 times more than the non-equipped class.

We also studied the reading speed and reading ability of both groups. The special-equipped group presented much better results than the non-equipped.

4 months later, we studied both classes and verified that, in the class equipped with our special furniture, there was a reading improvement of 24.4 percent. In the non-equipped class, we verified an increase of only 7 percent, which could easily be due only to the fact that the children were now 4 months older.

We have also been studying the reading speed and the spelling mistakes in another school. The first results are showing a very high performance in the group equipped with special furniture when compared to the non-equipped group. The quantifiable results are still in progress.

Proprioceptive aggression doesn't harm the intellectual level but it can terribly harm the execution level, which is the main factor of learning disabilities.