But probably the most common one that you've heard of,

is that some of us are auditory learners,

where we learn best by listening to things;

some of us are more visual learners,

where we learn best by seeing things;

and some of us might be more tactile or kinesthetic learners,

where we learn best by actually doing things

or engaging in physical activities.

How many of you have heard of that before?

Well, the good news and bad news:

the bad news is, if you believe in learning styles, you're actually wrong.

I'll explain that in just a minute.

But the good news is that it's not entirely your fault.

This belief in learning styles is incredibly pervasive.

It's so common that few people ever think to even question it. Right?

It sounds so logical. It sounds so real.

But when put to the test, we found that learning styles don't exist.

And there are tons of people that believe this.

When we survey, for example, students and teachers,

we find that something like 90 percent of them

or over 90 percent of people believe they have a learning style.

And many teachers today are still told that part of their job,

in order to be effective teachers,

is to figure out what their students' learning styles are,

and then accommodate them for the classroom.

There are even a host of companies and organizations out there that support learning styles,

and who, for a fee,will train you on how to maximize your potential or that of your students,by addressing learning styles and learning what yours are.

But again, the key is, when put to the test,

these learning styles don't exist; it doesn't make a difference.

I will say that when we survey people,

many people say they have preferences.

So if I asked, "How would you like to learn something?"

or "How would you like to study?",

many of you might say, "I'd prefer to see it,"

or "I'd prefer to hear it," or "I'd prefer to actually do it."

So that's true.

But the key is that those preferences don't actually enhance your learning when we test them in experimental conditions.

And there are many different ways to test this,

but the basic design is this:

We bring in a bunch of different people

who supposedly have different learning styles.

We teach them in a variety of ways.

Then we see if teaching them in one way was somehow better for them or more effective than others.

So for example, let's say I had a list of words I wanted you to memorize.

In one group I might show you that list of words;

I'll present the list of words for you.

Or in another group, similarly,

I might show you images of those words.

In yet another group or another condition,

I might just let you listen to those words and hear them,

so you wouldn't actually see anything,

but you would hear someone saying: dog, hose, coat, etc.

Now if learning styles existed, if it was true,

we would expect that visual learners, or so-called visual learners,

would be able to recall more words when they saw them.

So, either when they saw the list or when they saw the actual images.

And we would expect that so-called auditory learners

would be able to recall more words when they heard them, right?

But the finding is, learning is actually the same.

The number of words you recall is exactly the same,

regardless of how the material is presented to you.

I know that's just one example of one particular study,

but I’m asking you to trust me

that this has been replicated in many different contexts

with many different people of all different ages,

and tested in slightly different ways with exactly the same results.

In fact, there have been several meta-analysis papers

where they've looked at all the research on this topic for 40 years,

and all of them have concluded the same thing:

that there is still no evidence

that matching teaching styles to supposed learning styles

or students' preferences actually makes a difference.

But I would encourage you to look up some of this research on your own.

In particular, these review articles.

So how is that possible?

I’m sure some of you are wondering, "How does that even make sense?"

Because it sounds so good.

And there's a lot of different research on learning and memory to explain this,

but one of the main ideas is that most of what we learn in the classroom

and most of what our teachers want us to know in particular

is stored in terms of meaning,

and it's not tied to one particular sense or one particular sensory mode.

Now, just like people have preferences,

it's also true that some of you might have better visual memories

or better auditory memories or auditory processing skills

compared to other people,

and that might be advantageous for certain type of tasks.

So for example, if I wanted you to remember:

What was the color of the coat on that last slide?

or: How many windows were on that house on the last slide?

then having a really good visual memory would help with that.

Likewise, if I had read you the list of words and I said,

"Were they read in a high voice or a low voice?"

or, "Which words were read by a woman,

and which ones were read by a man?",

then having a really good auditory memory would help with that.

But those aren't typically the kinds of questions

that teachers are asking you to remember,

or the things teachers want you to learn in the classroom.

Mostly what you learn in the classroom is much more conceptual,

or meaning based.

It's not just what something looks like or what something sounds like.

And by the way, this finding, this whole idea, also helps to explain

why simple rehearsal strategies, like rereading your notes

or just rewriting your notes,

even though they're very commonly used strategies,

they tend to be not very effective,

because rereading your notes or rewriting your notes

doesn't necessarily help you understand the material.

In order to retain information,

we have to organize it in a way that's meaningful.

We have to make connections to it,

connecting it to our experiences or coming up with our own examples

or thinking of how we're learning something in one class,

and how that relates to what else we know.

That's what helps us remember it.

There's a lot of research to support this idea

that most of what we learn is stored in terms of meaning,

and not according to visual images or auditory sounds.

But some of the best, most relevant research

comes from these classic studies that were done in the 70s.

Chase & Simon were interested in chess players' abilities

to recall pictures of chessboard games in progress.

So what they would do is show players an image of a game in progress

for a short time -- typically, only five seconds or so --

and then it would disappear.

Then they would ask the players to recall where all the pictures were,

where all the pieces were in that picture.

And what they found was a big difference

between novice players, or beginner players, and experts.

Beginner players, when asked to recall where the pieces were,

could only remember about four pieces.

Experts, on the other hand, could actually identify almost all of them -

over 20 of them, they could correctly identify

on the next game board when asked to recall these.

Again, they were interested in knowing: Why is this difference?

Why do we see this difference between beginners and experts?

It wasn't because, like you might be thinking,

that the experts had better visual memories than the beginners.

It was because the experts had more experience playing chess,

and more knowledge.

In other words, this game board was more meaningful to them.

They could see the strategy involved.

They could imagine what was happening

and why the players had their pieces positioned the way they did.

And to further support this idea, they did a follow-up study.

In the follow-up study,

they showed the chess players pictures of randomly arranged chessboards.

That's this picture here.

Now to you or I, or to a beginner chess player,

these might look basically the same.

I mean, yeah, the pieces are in different places,

but for the most part, they might be equally difficult to remember.

To an expert, though, we found big differences

when presented with a randomly configured board.

Once it was random,

experts no longer had an advantage in remembering pieces,

because it wasn't meaningful to them.

Because there's no meaningful arrangement in the second piece,

they lost that advantage, which again, it just shows us further evidence

that we store information in terms of meaning,

and not according to a sensory mode.

And this basic finding, by the way, has been extended to other contexts,

everything from chess to basketball,

to computer programming and to dance.

We store information in terms of meaning

and not limited to particular sensory modes.

So that's the first reason.

Another reason why this learning-styles theory doesn't pan out

is that the best way to teach something or learn something

really depends on what it is you want to learn.

It depends on the content itself.

Now, if I wanted you, for example,

to know what a bunch of different songbirds looked like,

the best way to teach you that

is to let you look at pictures of those songbirds,

or let you see them in real life.

But note that that's true for everybody,

not just because you're a visual learner.

That's because looking at them is what I'm asking you to do,

to remember what they look like.

On the other hand, if I wanted you to remember what they sounded like

or be able to distinguish between different songs of different songbirds,

then letting you hear them would be the best way.

But again, that applies to everybody.

Just like if I wanted you to know what different flowers smell like.

The best way to teach you that

is to let you experience those flowers by smelling them.

But that doesn't mean you're an olfactory learner,

or that you learn everything better through smelling.

I mean, take a minute to imagine

what that would look like in a math class

or an anatomy class or a physics class.

And as absurd as that sounds, it's really important to remember

that the same problems, the same criticisms apply

whether we're talking about so-called olfactory learners

or whether we're talking about auditory learners or visual learners

or even kinesthetic learners.

The last three might seem more palatable or more reasonable,

but the same issues apply.

It really depends on what I'm asking you to learn, the best way to teach it.

But that also brings me to another point,

this idea that many things can be taught using multiple senses.

So it's not just limited to one, for example.

So, say I wanted you to learn the game of football.

Probably the best way to teach you football

is to get you out there and play football,

to actually practice and have that physical experience playing.

But you would also probably benefit from being able to watch a football game,

or being able to look at schematics or drawings

of the different formations and different positions,

just like you'd probably also benefit from hearing coaching

or hearing feedback as you're playing.

You're getting the kinesthetic experience, the visual and the auditory.

Similarly, if a music teacher wanted you to know

the different parts of a symphony orchestra,

then going to an orchestra and listening to one would be beneficial.

But it would also add to the experience

if you had the capability to touch the instruments,

or maybe to learn how to play them.

Or to actually watch one live.

Again, it's not that different modes make it meaningful to different

people based on their learning style.

It's not like all the visual learners are only going to learn by seeing it.

It's because incorporating multiple sensory experiences

into one lesson makes it more meaningful.

So then you might be wondering:

Why does this myth persist?

There's a few different explanations.

The first one is quite simply that everybody believes it.

It's so common that you never even think to question it.

How could so many people be wrong?

If so many people believe it, how is it possible that it's wrong?

But as you know, just because something is commonly believed

doesn't necessarily make it true.

Remember, just as an example, at one point we used to think

that the Earth was the center of the universe,

until scientists like Copernicus and Galileo proved us otherwise.

Likewise, there was a time in which some people

actually believed or were worried that polio might be caused by ice cream,

which we now know is nonsense.

And, unfortunately, even today one unfortunate myth that still persists

is this idea that vaccines cause autism,

despite the lack of any scientific evidence.

Just because a lot of people believe it, doesn't make it true.