Sensory information about position and movement of body parts relative to gravity available via sensory receptors (i.e., proprioceptors) in joints, muscle and skin as well as the vestibular system. Closing the eyes and touching the nose with the index finger relies almost entirely on proprioception (it is difficult, if not impossible though, to isolate completely its effects from that of touch). It is sometimes referred to as a meta-sense as it integrates detection of muscle activity with a sense of the size and shape of your body. The work of Goodwin and colleagues (1972) that established that it is receptors in muscles not joints are responsible for proprioception. They did so by vibrating the biceps and triceps muscles when the arms were held in a fixed position with participants reporting experiencing the arm extending. In contrast to other senses, the development of proprioception has received much less attention. For the period of childhood, various clinical and informal assessment protocols have been devised.
See Body awareness, Cross-modal matching, Feedback, Golgi tendon organ, Kinesthesis, Muscle spindle, Object unity, Vestibular system