Are you being fooled by claims of brain-based learning?

What happens when people add scientific-sounding words to their arguments--even if the scientific-sounding words have nothing to do with those arguments?

Research now has the answer. Here's the research abstract from a recent publication:

Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people's abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation.

We tested this hypothesis by giving naïve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) × 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design.

Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as confirmed by the expert subjects.

Subjects in all three groups judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. But subjects in the two nonexpert groups additionally judged that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were more satisfying than explanations without.

The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts' judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations.

So, if you're swayed by "brain-based learning" and other such scientifically-sounding arguments, you might ask yourself, was the argument really persuasive or was I just fooled into thinking it was.

Weisberg, Deena Skolnick; Keil, Frank C.; Goodstein, Joshua; Rawson, Elizabeth; Gray, Jeremy R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477.

Comments

[Jeremy Browne]

Even when the neuroscience in instructional methods *is* relevant, it's often overgeneralized. It reminds me of Skinner's Walden Two, and how even otherwise brilliant minds try to go beyond the data.

[Julie Dirksen]

Thought you might like this:

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/02/area_responsible_for.html

[Darko]

One great example of this is "Intelligent Design"...sounds good and scientific but in fact it's a bunch of dogma.

[Darko]

Will, there is a 'research' that says: #
# Studies by educational researchers suggest that approximately 83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses - 11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch.

is at: http://www.osha.gov/doc/outreachtraining/htmlfiles/traintec.html

I wonder if that research is the same one you describe in your '10% 20% o really?' article? Or this is just another new false statement.

[Kevin]

Enjoyable blogpost with potential for wide applicability. Thinking about our daily lives and responses to "psuedo-scientific" words can help increase our self-awareness as we deal with receiving advertising, receiving ideas/requests at work, and as we promote our own perspectives. This self-awareness input can be used as a check to help ask and frame the right questions.

[mark oehlert]

Will,

I'm still looking for the other than "brain-based learning." I'm also bother anything that has a number in it...7 Habits, 9 Events, 4 Levels, :-)

[Cammy Bean]

See, I was simply pulled in by the title of your post, Will. Brain-based? I'm all ears! :)

[JRA]

@Darko,

Regarding your link ( http://www.osha.gov/doc/outreachtraining/htmlfiles/traintec.html )

I pulled that up. Lets just focus on "Studies by educational researchers suggest..."

What studies? Where are the references? Unless a study is pointed out - I make the assumption is doesn't exist. If it does exist, then they should direct readers to it. Then I can look at that study. Look at the research questions. Look at the research methodology. Look at how they came to their conclusions.

Because research by leading pundits says, that if you believe everything you read on the Internet... you may just be naive.

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Almost a Rorschach test to challenge the stereotypes and preconceptions that we inevitably bring into any conversation today

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I completely agree and I just wanted to say that I really like your blog. Is it Wordpress based?

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I want to express my admiration of your writing skill and ability to make reader to read the while thing to the end. I would like to read more of your blogs and to share my thoughts with you. I will be your frequent visitor, that’s for sure.

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Hi

Great information in this post and I think the neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts' judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations.

[Mychael Margott]

This theory also helps explain recurring learning behaviors, and is a meta-concept that includes an eclectic mix of techniques. Currently, related techniques stress allowing teachers to connect learning to students' real lives and emotional experiences, as well as their personal histories and experiences.

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Potentially very misleading scatter chart. Are the costs only the out of pocket at the doctor office? Do they include the added tax burden for the universals? It's all in us dollars but how about as a percentage of average per capita income. Numbers and political topics are nothing but propaganda. Hopefully the advances in medicine over the next 20 years will make the lifespan numbers irrelevant.

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So far, everyone I know who looked at the graph thought it was obtuse. But I socialize with college educated, mostly in the technical fields.

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The US healthcare system despite having 50M people effectively uninsured has over 250M people insured, making a larger healthcare system than any other country, by far. I wonder if the spend correlates to quantity of people covered.

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I like the short, topic specific nature, also the additional one's like myth of the week and news. It is easy to become so absorbed in the daily details of projects that you forget to apply new things you're learning –this is a good way to be reminded and to learn new nuggets.

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Will is an extremely knowledgeable person and his ideas have far-reaching benefits to the training field. Offering his job aids free and letting participants share them freely shows how much he values the importance of training and helping ensure that learning is relevant and applicable to the job/skill. He's outstanding! – Senior Instructional Designer

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I greatly appreciate that you are willing to give of your time to "push" this information to us. Also appreciative of the fact that you are willing to freely share the information

[thomas sabo]

The US healthcare system despite having 50M people effectively uninsured has over 250M people insured, making a larger healthcare system than any other country, by far. I wonder if the spend correlates to quantity of people covered

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I think the scope of neuroscience has broadened to include different approaches used to study the molecular, cellular, developmental, structural, functional, evolutionary, computational, and medical aspects of the nervous system

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