AFT - Publications - American Educator - Summer 2005 - Ask the Cognitive Scientist

This link has been bookmarked by 19 people . It was first bookmarked on 30 Mar 2008, by Christine Martell.

20 Jul 09

Suzanne Cadwell
colt-fod
15 Jul 09

Dorothy Goulet
- The idea that people may differ in their ability to learn new material depending on its modality—that is, whether the child hears it, sees it, or touches it—has been tested for over 100 years
- What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content’s best modality.
- 20 more annotations...
- - but most memories are stored in terms of meaning.
  - An important finding from that research is that memory is usually stored independent of any modality
  - An important clue that memories are stored by their meaning is the types of errors people make on memory tests.
  - The mind is capable of storing memories in a number of different formats, and laboratory research indicates that a single experience usually leads to more than one type of representation
  - Our minds have these different types of representations for a reason: Different representations are more or less effective for storing different types of information
  - Because these different memory representations store different types of information, you usually cannot use one representation to substitute for another.
  - 3. Children probably do differ in how good their visual and auditory memories are, but in most situations, it makes little difference in the classroom.
  - We’ve said that some memories are stored visually, some auditorily, and some in terms of meaning
  - There are some limited types of materials for which an exact visual or auditory representation is helpful.
  - But most of what we want children to learn is based on meaning, so their superior memory in a specific modality doesn’t give them an advantage just because material is presented in their preferred modality.
  - it is not surprising that researchers have found very little support for the idea that offering instruction in a child’s best modality will have a positive effect on his learning.
  - Kavale and Forness’s meta-analysis provides substantial evidence that tailoring instruction to students’ modality is not effective
  - We cannot be certain that modality theory is incorrect because it is always possible that we haven’t looked for just the right sort of evidence.
  - Although it is technically true that the theory hasn’t been (and will never be) disproved, we can say that the possible effects of matching instructional modality to a student’s modality strength have been extensively studied and have yielded no positive evidence.
  - That indicates that teachers should indeed think about the modality in which they present material, but their goal should be to find the content’s best modality, not to search (in vain) for the students’ best modality
  - Many topics may call for information in more than one modality.
  - Material should be presented auditorily or visually because the information that the teacher wants students to understand is best conveyed in that modality.
  - Modality gives us an easily understood way to think about the differences among children and it offers a hopeful message—a relatively easy adjustment to teaching practice may provide a boost to kids who are struggling.
  - There are two ways that a teacher might see what looks like evidence for modality theory in the classroom.
  - Modality theory may also seem correct because, as we have discussed, children probably do differ in their abilities with different types of memories.
07 Apr 09

Marybeth O'Brien
DI & Tech Integration Research
08 Feb 09

Theresa Bell
learningstyles learning
01 Nov 08

Kathy Blair
learning research learningstyles
31 Oct 08

Dan Callahan
learningstyles
17 Aug 08

Rena Shifflet
Discusses learning modalities and instructional practice

learningstyles
21 Jul 08

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
brain
20 Jul 08

elke das
multiple intelligence
19 Jul 08

Christy Tucker
Examines what cognitive science actually tells us about different learning styles and argues that the best answer is to choose the modality that best suits the content rather than adapting to the student.

learning cognition learningstyles research education
11 Aug 07

Christine Martell
02 Jul 07

Daniel Craig
This is a good article discussing the lack of evidence on the effectiveness for individualizing instruction based on modality (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). While not mentioned by name, this seems to be an answer to talk about learning styles.

individualization individualizedinstruction article research learningtheory danielcraig CALL teaching cognition learningstyles education learning
07 Dec 06

Sarah Bruce
teaching learning
17 Oct 06

EAmon Costello
teaching learning modal cognitive science
04 May 06

Cheryl van Tilburg
Daniel Willingham ("Ask the Cognitive Scientist") explores the theory of multiple learning styles.

cognitive science multiple intellegences learning styles
14 Jul 05

Stephen Harlow
Learning Styles Criticism General