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Are You a Visual or an Auditory Learner? It Doesn’t Matter Willingham, Daniel T . New York Times (Online) , New York: New York Times Company. Oct 4, 2018.

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ABSTRACT (ENGLISH) One mental strategy may be much better suited than another to a particular task. FULL TEXT You must read this article to understand it, but many people feel reading is not how they learn best. They would

rather listen to an explanation or view a diagram. Researchers have formalized those intuitions into theories of

learning styles. These theories are influential enough that many states (including New York ) require future

teachers to know them and to know how they might be used in the classroom.

But there’s no good scientific evidence that learning styles actually exist.

Over the last several decades, researchers have proposed dozens of theories, each suggesting a scheme to

categorize learners. The best known proposes that some of us like words and others like pictures, but other

theories make different distinctions: whether you like to solve problems intuitively or by analyzing them, for

example, or whether you prefer to tackle a complex idea with an overview or by diving into details.

If one of these theories were right, it would bring important benefits. In the classroom, a brief test would categorize

children as this type of learner or that, and then a teacher could include more of this or that in their schooling. In

the workplace, a manager might send one employee a memo but communicate the same information to another in

a conversation.

Does such matching work? To find out, researchers must determine individuals’ supposed learning style and then

ask them to learn something in a way that matches or conflicts with it. For example, in an experiment testing the

visual-auditory theory, researchers determined subjects’ styles by asking about their usual mental strategies: Do

you spell an unfamiliar word by sounding it out or visualizing the letters? Do you give directions in words or by

drawing a map?

Next, researchers read statements, and participants rated either how easily the statement prompted a mental

image (a visual learning experience) or how easy it was to pronounce (an auditory learning experience). The

auditory learners should have remembered statements better if they focused on the sound rather than if they

created visual images, and visual learners should have shown the opposite pattern. But they didn’t.

The theory is wrong, but, curiously, people act as though it’s right —they try to learn in accordance with what they

think is their style. When experimenters asked research participants to learn a new task and gave them access to

written instructions and to diagrams, the people who thought of themselves as verbalizers went for words, and the

self-described visualizers looked at pictures. But tests showed they didn’t learn the task any faster because they

adhered to their purported style.

In another experiment , researchers eavesdropped on brain activity to show that people will mentally change a task

to align with what they think is their learning style. Researchers used stimuli that were either pictures (a blue-

striped triangle) or verbal descriptions (“green,” “dotted,” “square”). While in a brain scanner, participants had to

match successive stimuli, but they never knew whether a picture or words would pop up next.

When self-described visual learners saw words, the visual part of their brain was active; they were transforming the

verbal stimulus into a picture. Likewise, verbal areas of the brain were active when verbal learners saw a picture;

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they were describing it to themselves. But again, these efforts were in vain. People performed the task no better

when the stimuli matched what they thought of as their learning style.

The problem is not just that trying to learn in your style doesn’t help —it can cost you. Learning style theories

ignore the fact that one mental strategy may be much better suited than another to a particular task. For example,

consider the theory that differentiates intuitive and reflective thinking. The former is quick and relies on

associations in memory; the latter is slower and analytic.

Whatever your purported style, intuitive thinking is better for problems demanding creativity, and reflective thinking

is better for formal problems like calculations of probability. An intuitive thinker who mulishly sticks to his

supposed learning style during a statistics test will fail.

Although conforming to learning styles doesn’t help, we can learn a few lessons from this research.

First, instead of trying to transform a task to match your style, transform your thinking to match the task. The best

strategy for a task is the best strategy , irrespective of what you believe your learning style is.

Second, don’t let your purported style be a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure or an excuse for resignation. “Sorry I

mixed up the dates —I’m just not a linear thinker” is bunk. Likewise, don’t tell your child’s teacher that she is

struggling in class because the teacher is not adjusting to her learning style.

Finally, the idea of tuning tasks to an individual’s style offered hope —a simple change might improve performance

in school and at work. We’ve seen that that doesn’t work, but this research highlights hope of another kind. We are

not constrained by our learning style. Any type of learning is open to any of us.

Credit: Daniel T. Willingham DETAILS

Subject: Researchers; Brain research; Cognitive style

Location: New York

Identifier / keyword: Education Psychology and Psychologists Tests and Examinations

Publication title: New York Times (Online); New York

Publication year: 2018

Publication date: Oct 4, 2018

Section: opinion

Publisher: New York Times Company

Place of publication: New York

Country of publication: United States, New York

Publication subject: General Interest Periodicals--United States

Source type: Blogs, Podcasts, &Websites

Language of publication: English

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Copyright: Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company

Last updated: 2018-10-07

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First, read the following article about learning styles: Learning Styles.pdfPreview the document

So the author presents the idea that no one has a singular "learning style." Instead, we use different learning styles to help us in different contexts.

Do you see how this might be related to multimodality? If so, what connections are you making? If not, explain what your hesitations are.

Another way to think of it: what do these ideas suggest about the importance of various types of literacy and/or communication? Finally, how do you think the information from the article and from this week's modules will impact the way you manage information in the future? how you learn? how you interact with the world?

(minimum of 200 words)