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The risk of Neuromyths

POLICY-MAKING NEEDS (TO GET) SCIENCE (RIGHT)

OVERVIEW ON NEUROMYTHS

Origin

Characteristics

REASONS

Communication shortcomings

Neurophilia

Cognitive illusions and biases

INTEREST

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•  Rauscher, Shaw, Ky, 1993:

•  effects of listening Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K.448)

•  on adult spatial capacities

•  8-9 points increase on IQ scale

•  Short term effects

•  Failed to be confirmed by other laboratories

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The central finding of the present paper however, is certainly the noticeably higher overall effect in studies performed by Rauscher and colleagues than in studies performed by other researchers, indicating systematically moderating effects of lab affiliation. On the whole, there is little evidence left for a specific, performance-enhancing Mozart effect. (Pietschnig, et al, 2010)

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Mr. Miller, a Democrat, proposed as part of his $12.5 billion state budget on Tuesday to spend $105,000 to make music available to each of the approximately 100,000 children born in Georgia each year.

‘‘No one questions that listening to music at a very early age affects the spatial, temporal reasoning that underlies math and engineering and even chess,'' the Governor said today. ''Having that infant listen to soothing music helps those trillions of brain connections to develop.’

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Origins of neuromyths

1. Distortions of scientific facts, undue simplifications 2. Offspring of scientific hypotheses that have been held true for a while, and then abandoned because of the emergence of new evidence 3. Use of scientific jargon with no scientific reference, even loose

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1. Distortions of scientific facts, undue simplifications

2. Offspring of scientific hypotheses that have been held true for a while, and then abandoned because of the emergence of new evidence

3. Use of scientific jargon with no scientific reference, even loose

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1. Distortions of scientific facts, undue simplifications

2. offspring of scientific hypotheses that have been held true for a while, and then abandoned because of the emergence of new evidence

3. Use of scientific jargon with no scientific reference, even loose

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4. Bending facts to wishes and fears

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Characteristics of neuromyths

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¤  A. Neuromyths have a special relationship with the science of the brain ¤  develop in a climate of

neurophilia: the appetite for brain facts

¤  develop in a period of development of brain research

¤  B. are diffused and resilient to change

¤  C. are affected by explicit instruction about myths (Kowalski & Taylor 2009)

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Definition of neuromyth

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Illusions

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Urban legends

Other myths

Memorable stories

¤  Stories that stick

¤  Concern people

¤  Have mystery

¤  Involve the search for causes

¤  Are emotional

¤  Have a moral

¤  (Why not using them in education?)

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Origin

Characteristics

REASONS


Neurophilia


INTEREST

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Reasons

1. Communication shortcomings

a.  Placebic information

b.  Sensationalism

c.  Missing information

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Placebic information

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Langer et al 1978

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Persistence in memory of false information

There are many hypotheses in science, which are wrong, that’s perfectly on right, that’s the opportunity of finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. For being accepted, ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. (Carl Sagan: Cosmos)

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Seifert 2002

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Expert images & the polaroid effect

¤  (Weisberg 2008)

¤  The neuroscience studies that we see in the news are regularly accompanied by pictures of the brain, showing colorfully "glowing" bits of neural tissue.

¤  As humans, we are highly visual creatures, accustomed to relying on the fact that what we see is actually happening in the world.

¤  Looking at these brain pictures often gives us the feeling that we have a window into the brain and that we can actually see what the brain is doing. But this is simply not accurate. An fMRI scanner is not a window or even a microscope; the output that it provides is not really a picture of the brain, at least not in the way that the output of a camera is a picture of a face.

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¤  All brains are shaped and organized slightly differently, just like other parts of the body. My brain might be slightly smaller than yours, or my hippocampus located slightly more to the left. This means that a scan of my brain and a scan of your brain would not overlap exactly.

¤  But research studies require responses from multiple participants to ensure that the phenomenon under study is general, not subject-dependent. To solve the difficult problem of comparing the spatial structure of many brains when each of these structures is different, scientists have developed technical methods for standardizing each brain picture to fit a common template.

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¤  Another difference between brain images and photographs is that fMRI technology does not measure brain activation directly. Those glowing brain pictures are not actually pictures of a glowing brain. The way that those pictures are created involves several steps of analysis and hence are several steps removed from the brain itself.

¤  What fMRI scanners actually measure-and only indirectly at that-is the amount of blood flow to a given brain area, a reliable correlate of neural activity. To create a picture of brain activation from measures of blood flow, scientists first calculate the difference between the amount of blood flow in an area during one task and the amount of blood flow in the same area during a related task or a rest state.

¤  Using a grid superimposed over the brain picture, they then perform statistical tests to see whether the difference in the two amounts of blood flow in each grid square is unlikely to be due to chance. Colors are assigned to the grid squares based on degree of statistical significance.

¤  What we see when we look at the colored splotches in brain pictures are thus patches of statistical significance, not of activation itself

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2. Neurophilia and the promotion of private agendas

•  Public interest

•  Newspapers, projects & reports

•  Private agendas

•  Commercial products

•  Proliferation of neuro-labels

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3. Cognitive illusions and biases

•  Soothing function

•  Optimistic cognitive illusion

•  Confirmation bias

•  Correlation/causation illusions

•  Familiarity/Availability bias

•  Source amnesia

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Education and the brain: 2 approaches

1. studies in education, the mind and brain should hatch a new interdisciplinary field of research, and devise new ways for translating knowledge and evidence into the design of instructional methods that work (Fischer, et al., 2007; Fischer, Goswami, Geake, 2010).

2. Neuroscience as a body of knowledge that can be searched in order to find guidelines and/or easy fixes for education (Dennison & Dennison, 2010; Dunn & Dunn, 1978)

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Origin

Characteristics

REASONS


Neurophilia


INTEREST

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Interest

¤  Ethical implications (because of the encounter between science and applications)

¤  Money spent on phony interventions = money not spent on effective interventions

¤  Interference with the understanding of the real processes

¤  Misuse of science

¤  Cognitive implications ¤  Like illusions and other

misconceptions, neuromyths reveal the functioning of our mind

¤  when we come in contact with applied science

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Neuromyths in education

¤  No studies about the diffusion of neuromyths among educators

¤  But at least two flawed approaches are diffused, which incorporate neuromyths

¤  Brain Gym

¤  VAK Learning Styles

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¤  why do neuromyths persist independently of their falsity and poor applicative value?

¤  urge of application

¤  lack of neuroscience education in the course of educators’ initial and professional training

¤  neurophilia can thus favor the myth that the translation of brain science into applications is just straightforward

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¤  Practical implications ¤  Instruction (general)

¤  Instruction (specific)

¤  Decisions based on research (science-informed and evidence-based)

¤  Collaboration between educators and scientists

¤  Role for immediate application of cognitive sciences (theory) ¤  Preventing mistakes

based on having the science wrong

¤  Debunking neuromyths

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¤  There is growing evidence that people hold beliefs how they learn that are faulty in various ways, which frequently lead people to manage their own learning and teach others in non-optimal ways. This fact makes it clear that research – not intuition or standard practices – needs to be the foundation for upgrading teaching and learning. If education is to be transformed into an evidence-based field, it is important not only to identify teaching techniques that have experimental support but also to identify widely held beliefs that affect the choices made by educational practitioners but that lack empirical support

¤  (Pashler et al. 2009)

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Questions

¤  BRAIN GYM/VAK LS ¤  Comment reasons why educators might embrace Brain

Gym/VAK LS

¤  Comment reasons why they should not

¤  Neuromyths: fight or flight? ¤  How?

¤  List neuromyths that might affect education

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Technology