Areas of Confusion in Cognitive Science, part 1

I’ve talked a lot about myths in these updates. As a recent example, update #128 focused on the learning styles myth. Generally speaking, the term neuromyths is used to refer to flawed ideas about learning that are widely believed in education (e.g. Howard-Jones, 2014). They are an example of metacognition, because the concern how we think about thinking/learning.

However, it’s worth noting that many myths are based on a kernel of truth that has been misunderstood. For example, the idea that some people are ‘right brained’ draws on some real differences between the left and right sides of the human brain, but extend this into an oversimplified and unhelpful way of categorising people, distorting the basic science (Hines, 1987).

Unfortunately, cognitive science is not immune to myths of its own. As with other areas of science, valuable ideas can be distorted and misunderstood, and those misunderstandings can spread through the teaching professions.

This relates to what by Ed Haertel has termed lethal mutations, as explained in this post by Kate Jones at Evidence Based Education. Lethal mutations are changes that modify an idea from the research in ways that harms its efficacy or even leads to it becoming harmful rather than helpful.

I thought I’d contribute to this discussion with my own take on misconceptions about cognitive science that I’ve noticed. Some of these might not be true lethal mutations (you can be the judge), but they strike me as significant oversimplifications of cognition research.

Retrieval practice is perhaps the best-embedded idea from cognitive science. In the dozen or so years since I first explored the research on this issue, I’ve seen a massive change in awareness. Many teachers today appreciate that it is worth testing their students to help knowledge to stick, that they should keep this low stakes.

I perceive a popular misconception, however, in conflating retrieval practice with tests. It seems that many people forget that that things like classroom questioning and discussions lead to retrieval (if structured properly). Retrieval practice is not always about quizzing, which is a key reason why researchers moved away from an older term, ‘the testing effect’.

I’ve heard interleaving described as one of the hardest topics to understand. I think the reason could be that teachers immediately assume that it’s about mixing up topics. In fact, the research evidence does not do this at all. Perhaps the term is the problem – the term ‘compare and contrast effect’ has been used in some research papers, and might be a better name for it.

The key idea is that interleaving needs to contrast relevant examples so that students see the difference between them. There is no interleaving benefit if unrelated information is mixed together.

(Read more here: update #14).

Like retrieval practice, cognitive load is pretty well embedded into the awareness of teachers, at least in some sectors and countries. However, it is also widely misunderstood. I could (and probably should) write a full post on that issue!

The key idea which makes sense, and which most people get, is that working memory is limited and can be overloaded, and it makes sense to manage how much we ask learners to think about at a given time.

The problem lies when simplification and reduction of content is seen as always desirable. This is not what the theory says – cognitive load researchers recognise that complexity is both necessary and desirable. Intrinsic load is the term for the key aspects of a task that can’t be removed. Further, germane load relates to useful forms of load, such as examples and visual cues that help the learner to make links to existing knowledge. These should not be cut out, and we shouldn’t be aiming for learning to feel easy.

I’ve also observed a lot of educators misunderstand the timescale of cognitive load. Working memory is really brief – a matter of seconds. Learners feeling overloaded over hours or days, this is a completely different issue, and therefore links to different theoretical concepts.

What are your thoughts on these points? Do you agree that they are common misconceptions? And could some of the guidance and CPD on these issues be leading to these or other mistakes arising?

I’ll tackle a further three areas next time. I haven’t quite decided which ones to cover, though, some that I have in mind include:

• Dual coding

• Spacing effect

• Metacognition

• Schemas

Suggestions/preferences? Perhaps you can suggest some more – if so, I’ll endeavour to cover those, too!

Hope you have a great week,

Jonathan

As a bit of further reading, here is a post I wrote a while ago about the left brain vs. right brain myth, mentioned above:

Firth, J. (2021). Creative neuroscience: The left-brain/right-brain myth. https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/schoolofeducation/blog/creativeneuroscience/

Last time: Should lecturers know how learning works?

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