Learning Styles and the Brain

I taught neuropsychological research with an emphasis on special education for 25 years. I got started in this area when I told a friend that I did not have visual imagery. Her reaction was, "How do you think?"
I think by talking to myself but she thought via mental imagery. From there I developed a theory of the causes and remediation of reading disability.

To get started, try a simple experiment. Image an animal. Now rate it from 0-10 in terms of vividness and being lifelike. Did you image with your eyes open or closed? Now image with your eyes closed if they were open or open if they were closed. Now rate the image. Did it change?

I have tried this demonstration many times and about 50% of the people image with their eyes open and a majority of them, find the image decreases in vividness when they close them. But how often do we hear the instructions: Close your eyes and imagine.....

Try this in your classroom and let's hear what you find.

A closing question: When a song runs through your head, who is doing the singing?

Tags: imagery, neuropsychology, visual

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Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on March 29, 2009 at 1:48pm

I ended my first message to this discussion with a question:
When a song runs through your head who is doing the singing. From multiple informal surveys, I have found that half the people say they are listening to the artist and half say they are doing the singing. This distinction has clear connection to the hemispheres of the brain. Only the left hemisphere is capable of speech and so had to be involved. An interesting aside is that when you are doing the singing, you can choose to stop. When you hear the artist there may not be as easy a turnoff switch.

This is more than a cocktail party quip, it underlies a major difference between the two hemispheres and the affect that difference has had on Education. Speaking is a frequently used assessment tool. Read out loud, Give a prepared speech. Repeat something memorized. A spelling bee.

Now add the fact that the two hemispheres are not equally proficient in all people. That means that individuals with good oral skills will have an advantage in those tasks. And those who are be weak in those skills may be called learning disabled.

Phonics was called the way to teach reading by George Wl Bush and Mayor Bloomberg of NYC proclaiming a one size fits all approach, even though it is precisely the wrong method for those who are weak in the LH speech center.

I was involved in some classroom research that has real implications. Students were divided into those we considered stronger in RH abilities and those stronger in LH abilities. They were shown pairs of words they had to remember either by imaging them or repeating them. All children were involved in both tasks, suitably counterbalanced.

When the LH group used imagery it showed no difference from baseline, but when they used verbal repetition their performance improved.

When the RH group used imagery there was a major improvement from baseline, but when they used verbal repetition, their performance got worse.

What that means is the verbal repetition is counterproductive for about 50% of a class. Maybe repeating Cat c-a-t Cat is precisely the wrong way to teach spelling to some kids.

Permalink Reply by Lyndise Tarbuck on March 25, 2013 at 3:22am

Hi, an interesting experiment. I consider myself a right side of the brain creative person but often struggle with visualisation. In your introduction you talk about having developed a theory of the causes fand remediation of reading disability. I wonder if your theory includes the recognition of numbers...almost a form of dyslexia for numbers?