By Cindy Nebel

One of our goals as Learning Scientists is to make sure that research is communicated in an accessible but accurate way. Unfortunately, many times science dissemination results in miscommunication and translation such that the original results and message are skewed. Sometimes these results get altered like a game of telephone to the point that they become pervasive beliefs that are no longer based in evidence. Cognitive researchers often call these neuromyths.

We’ve talked about a few neuromyths before: the left brain/right brain myth, learning styles, and a digest including links to lots of problematic extensions of real research. Neuromyths are a real problem. In one study (1) it was found that 93% of the general population and 76% of educators believed in the learning styles hypothesis. As a result of these misunderstandings of original research, institutions have spent thousands of dollars investing in learning styles inventories and, unfortunately, many students have been taught that they do not have the ability to learn in a manner inconsistent with their preferred style. This is just one example of a pervasive neuromyth, but others have similar negative consequences and so it is worthwhile to consider research into ways to reduce these beliefs.

In a newly published study (2), researchers attempted to reduce beliefs in neuromyths with some success! In this study, the researchers conducted two experiments, one with the general population and one with undergraduate students at a university. All participants read a series of 20 true and 20 false statements (neuromyths) and indicated whether each was true or false and how confident they were in their answer. Then they read the same statements again, but what happened next depended on which condition they were assigned to.

In one condition, they were simply told that the statements were true or false. In the next condition, they were given an explanation for why the statements were true or false. In a third condition, the explanation was paired with an image (to support dual coding). And finally, in the control condition, they simply read the statements.

Participants then rated true and false statements again 1 week and 1 month later. Not surprisingly, when participants had higher confidence in their false beliefs, they were less likely to correct them, but across all four conditions, belief in neuromyths decreased and the changed beliefs mostly persisted after 1 month! Across all three conditions where participants were told the neuromyths were false, their belief in those neuromyths went down about 30%. Another important finding in the undergraduate sample was that students reported that they had learned about 40% of the neuromyths in school.

These are actually very surprising results. For example, in another study (3), researchers attempted to get rid of beliefs in neuromyths using almost identical procedures and were unable to reduce the false beliefs. So what’s going on here? One possibility is that the latter study used teachers as their participants. Given that 40% of the neuromyths in the present study were learned in the classroom, it may be that educators believe more strongly in neuromyths because they are discussed far more in education circles than in the general public, making those beliefs stronger and more resistant to change. In fact, in the current study, higher confidence was associated with more persistent false beliefs, so it would make sense that educators who believe strongly in neuromyths would be less likely to change those beliefs.

What’s my takeaway from these articles? We need earlier interventions. We need to be talking about neuromyths for what they are with students in teacher-training programs so that they don’t carry these beliefs with them into the classroom and hand them down to their students. It may be as simple as having them read through the list and then telling them they’re false, similar to the first condition in this study. It turns out that this kind of learning from errors can be surprising and lead to hypercorrection and even better learning than just telling people these are false to begin with (4). If we’re going to talk to teachers in training, we also need to talk to them about the pervasive nature of neuromyths in education. Very likely these newly minted teachers will be working with individuals who strongly believe in neuromyths and are unlikely to change their minds.

So what can you do? I assume if you’re a reader of our blogs and haven’t stopped reading this post yet, you are someone who is aware of neuromyths and accepts that they are false. If you are an educator, please consider reaching out to a trusted colleague where you did your teacher training. Have an honest conversation about your concerns about the impact of neuromyths in education. Better yet, also share with them the more effective evidence-based learning strategies that are rarely found in teacher-training textbooks. Let’s try to move the needle on this together where it will make the biggest impact. Let’s train the next generation of educators with effective, evidence-based beliefs about the way their students learn. And if you follow through with this, use the contact form at the bottom of our homepage to let us know how it went!

References:

(1) Macdonald, K., Germine, L., Anderson, A., Christodoulou, J., & McGrath, L. M. (2017). Dispelling the myth: raining in education or neuroscience decreases but does not eliminate beliefs in neuromyths. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1314.

(2) Lithander, M. P., Geraci, L., Karaca, M., & Rydberg, J. (2021). Correcting neuromyths: A comparison of different types of refutations. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.

(3) Ferrero, M., Garaizar, P., & Vadillo, M. A. (2016). Neuromyths in education: Prevalence among Spanish teachers and an exploration of cross-cultural variation. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 10, 496.

(4) Butler, A. C., Fazio, L. K., & Marsh, E. J. (2011). The hypercorrection effect persists over a week, but high-confidence errors return. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(6), 1238-1244.