😲 Myths About Brain And Learning 🤔

Psychology is quite a fascinating science. It gives us insight into the mysterious ways of how our brains work and what makes us who we are, like our behavior, intelligence, curiosity, determination or learning capacity. But as much as it can be useful and interesting, it can be very misleading. Many concepts and theories have no actual scientific verification. This means that many of those things you believe to be true and you blame some of your failures on are actually wrong or at best just partly correct.

So, let’s take a look at some of the most widespread myths that have to do with our brains and education.

➡️ #1. Games make you smarter 🎮

Brain can do a lot of things. It can even be trained. But to believe that brain-training games would actually do the trick is quite naive. Of course it might sound plausible, but in reality the only thing that you become good at when playing those games is — playing those games.

Research shows that there is no correlation between the improved thinking and smarts and brain games. They in no way facilitate attention, focus, memory or any other improvements. It’s just a nice marketing move and nothing more. The only thing you can take from playing is to have some fun and pass the time.

➡️ #2. Different people have different learning styles 📖

The myth is that everyone has a preferred learning style that ensures the better comprehension of the presented material. You’ve most certainly heard about this. You either a visual learner (understand the material better when it’s given in a visual form), an auditory learner (when you better comprehend the information presented verbally) or kinesthetic (your perception is better when having a hands-on experience). This notion is so widespread that the majority of teachers and students believe it to be true. And it’s understandable, since we are all different and unique. Honestly, I myself considered it a known fact. But what a surprise, it has no scientific evidence whatsoever.

The controlled experiments showed that the material wasn’t absorbed better by the students to whom it was presented in their preferred learning style. So, matching material to the person’s learning style is pointless. The format depends not on the person receiving the information, but on the material itself. You won’t be able to learn coding by simply listening to the explanations of what functions do. Or you won’t learn the correct pronunciation of a foreign language by simply looking at the words. To ensure better comprehension, the material should be presented in a variety of ways, making emphasis on those that better suit the type of the given material.

➡️ #3. Women are better at grammar and men at math and orientation 🚶 💃🏼

Gender differences is a long standing topic. We tend to believe that men and women are so dissimilar in the ways our brains work and how we think. But it’s mostly a stereotype that we really need to get rid off, since we are more alike than we think. This was proven by the recent analysis of differences between genders across all kinds of psychological functions.

Believing that men are better at math and reading maps, when an average woman does it better than almost 40% of men, is as wrong as believing that women are better at learning languages and grammar, when an average man is better at it than almost 40% of women. If these numbers stated 50%, the similarity would’ve been absolute. This slightly over 10% inequality is the biggest difference found by the psychologists.

It’s the same for how men and women communicate. We don’t speak different languages, as many might think. American Psychological Association published an article that said that people tend to act in accordance with the gender roles presented in their environment. If we remove the expectation of behaving in such a way, men and women communicate and think quite alike.

➡️ #4. Left-brained and right-brained people 🧠

Did you ever consider yourself to be a left or a right-brained person? Have you ever tied your practicality or creativity to having one or the other leading part of your brain? If so, you can stop this nonsense.

The idea of people having a prevailing right brain hemisphere, which results in them being more artistic, intuitive and creative, or left brain hemisphere, which makes them more analytical, objective and logical, is completely false. (Same as the offshoot of this theory — that left-handed people are more inventive). Nevertheless, 91% of teachers considered it to be correct and sound explanation for students’ differences.

At this time and age, the brain has been examined quite a lot (for example, study in 2013 by the Utah University scientists who have analysed over 1,000 brains), but no evidence supporting the theory of a dominant part of the brain has been found. The brain regions are all connected and involved in the process of performing any action, even the smallest routing one. This is supported by the research which showed that even though the abilities are based in different regions, their performance requires the connection to other parts of the brain.

The drop of truth that can be found in this myth is that some parts of the brain can become stronger during the adaptation to the same occurring conditions for a long period of time. It all has to do with the particular lifestyle.

➡️ #5. The rule of 10000 hour practice 🔨

This particular myth states that 10000 hours of practice are enough to become a rockstar in any new chosen field. Quite a claim! This was based on the research of Anders Ericsson, a Swedish professor and psychologist.

Nobody says that deliberate practice isn’t important. On the contrary, it’s essential to improving your skills. But this number means absolutely nothing. You can practice for those 10000 hours and it won’t ensure your greatness as a newly proclaimed programmer or musician. Some fields just never stop evolving, so there’s no way that after this set number of practices you won’t have to continue learning and practicing again in order to keep up. For example, programming languages constantly presenting new functions and improvements, so developers have to adjust and implement new things in their code. If they’d stopped at 10000 hours, the stars would’ve never been born, sidekicks at best.

Although, we can find at least something plausible in this myth. As it turned out, the proficiency can be predicted. This was found by the Princeton study. But it can only be possible in those fields that have stable rules and structures that never change (like football, running, chess).

➡️ #6. Only 10% of our brains is being used 🤯

This one I’ve heard the most often. It’s an intriguing idea (especially after watching the movie “Limitless”) that our brain has potential that is still to be uncovered. But this dormant potential is nothing more than an appealing myth. There’s nothing in neuroscience that would support this theory in the slightest, since each one of our actions activates the whole brain. Of course, different parts are responsible for different functions. Some of them have to be active non-stop, so we wouldn’t suddenly stop breathing, while others activate when needed, like when you need to solve a problem or respond to something scary.

The thing is, the brain is very energy-consuming, even being a considerably small part of our body. Its neurons (approximately 86 billion of them…have no idea how they are being counted 😅) are programmed to self-destruct if they can’t properly connect to active circuits. If someone actually used only 10% of their brain, it would’ve caused such significant damage with neural destruction that would be non-survivable. Not mentioning that the brain would’ve also shrinked. Not a pretty picture, but certainly brings us back to reality in which our brain is fully used and active.

Many of us might not use it very effectively, and most certainly not all 100% at once. Also, certain lifestyles of some people can make their brains more active than others, but it has nothing to do with uncovering hidden brain resources.

➡️ #7. Brainstorming in groups makes people more creative 🤝

Today collaboration is an extremely popular thing in almost every company. For some reason people took the phrase “two heads better than one” so literary that implemented this idea in various spheres of life. I’m not saying that sharing information and learning from one another is a bad thing, but it has nothing to do with the increased creativity in groups who brainstorm together.

Many researches have found that, in fact, group brainstorming actually interfere and limits creativity. It happens due to various reasons. First of all, it puts a lot of pressure, especially if you want to impress your colleagues and superiors. Secondly, very often people are fixating on one good idea somewhere at the beginning and fail to deliver or consider other good ideas that are being voiced later. Basically, it’s very hard to get a unique idea out of such brainstorm meetings. People need to get in a zone, think individually or with those they feel comfortable connecting. It’s better to give this space and collect the ideas later on.

➡️ #8. There are shortcuts to better learning 📈

We all from time to time stumble upon some app or a method that suggests much quicker and better result in learning something. Sometimes we even look for one. It’s a nice idea that the information could be faster absorbed by our brains and stick in memory, so all of us want to believe it. The sad truth is that every learning requires hard work. It’s a process that necessitates time, and there’s nothing that will make you good at something new without you putting in an effort.

The only thing that can be partially true in this myth is that there are ways to improve your learning and study more effectively. Knowing how the brain works and understanding your needs will certainly help you to spend time more usefully and make your efforts count. But don’t believe everything you read online or hear from others. Check for supportive data of actual studies and make sure that you won’t be wasting time switching learning methods and fads.

☑️ Conclusion 🤗

We went through some of the psychological myths about brain and education that are the most popularly defined as the known facts. Now you can easily throw them into the trash and free your mind of those misbeliefs.

Hope it was refreshing information for you. Share in the comments your thoughts on the topic. Did you find here myths you’ve believed? Are there any other psychological “facts” you know?