“An additional reason to abandon learning styles” – teachers and pupils do not agree on the pupils’ preferred learning style

“Learning styles” – there can be few ideas that have created such a stark disconnect between the experts on the ground and the evidence published in scholarly journals. Endorsed by the overwhelming majority of teachers, yet dismissed by most psychologists and educational neuroscientists as a “neuromyth”, the basis of learning styles is that people learn better when taught via their preferred learning modality, usually (but not always) described as either visual, auditory or kinaesthetic.

Many studies have already uncovered serious problems with the learning styles concept, such as that measures of learning styles are invalid and that students do not in fact learn better via their preferred modality. Now further evidence against learning styles comes from Greece, in one of the first investigations on the topic to involve primary school pupils.

Writing in Frontiers in Education, Marietta Papadatou-Pastou and her colleagues report that teachers and pupils did not agree on the pupils’ preferred learning modality – a significant blow for the learning styles concept since “teachers typically adopt learning styles within a classroom context by relying on their own assessment of students’ learning styles.”



The study was simple enough – nearly 200 fifth- and sixth-grade pupils (average age 11 years) from five schools chose which was their preferred learning style out of visual, auditory or kinaesthetic. They also completed a short IQ test (the Raven’s matrices). Next, their teachers – 19 took part – first provided an open-ended answer to the question “Does teaching that is tailor-made to the students’ learning style reinforce the students’ performance?”, then they were asked to identify each of their pupils’ favoured style (such that each child was rated by one teacher).

All of the participating teachers endorsed the concept of learning styles. However, there was not a statistically significant correlation between the teachers’ judgments of their pupils’ favoured learning style and the pupils’ own declaration of their preference. “We posit that identifying preferred learning style can be a hit-and-miss process, with no agreement between the assessment made by teachers and students,” the researchers said.

There was also no association between the teachers’ judgments of pupils’ learning style and the pupils’ IQ, suggesting the teachers were not using IQ as a proxy for learning style.

A weakness of the study was that the teachers were not asked specifically about the kind of learning styles approach they used or favoured, so it’s possible they were not familiar with the visual, auditory, kinaesthetic breakdown, though this seems unlikely since this so-called VARK model is the most popular.

Papadatou-Pastou and her team concluded that “… if the identification of learning styles … is unreliable, as evidence by the findings of the present study, this should constitute an additional reason why teachers should abandon the use of learning styles in instruction.”

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/12/12/an-additional-reason-to-abandon-learning-styles-teachers-and-pupils-do-not-agree-on-the-pupils-preferred-learning-style/(accessed 13.12.18)

New findings suggest post-traumatic growth may often be illusory

After a trauma many people have the sense it has changed them for the better, such as granting them a new appreciation for life or improving their relationships. This has given rise to the appealing notion that there is such a thing as “post-traumatic growth”. However, the majority of investigations into this phenomenon have relied on asking people whether they believe they have changed; very few have assessed people prior to a trauma and then re-assessed them afterwards to see if positive changes have actually occurred.

A new study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships is the first to apply this kind of “prospective design” in the context of relationship breakups in young adults, and – unfortunately for anyone who found comfort and inspiration in the principle of post-traumatic growth – the authors Meghan Owenz and Blaine Fowers say their findings are more consistent with the idea that such growth is mostly illusory, the result of a positive re-appraisal of the breakup and one’s current situation.



The researchers recruited 599 undergrads currently in a romantic relationship and assessed them twice on a range of measures: at the beginning, and near the end of the semester. During that time, 100 of them lived through their relationship breaking up, an experience that, typically for their age group, they found extremely distressing (in fact, on a formal scale they rated their feelings of distress on a par with those reported by survivors of natural disasters and cardiac surgery).

At the start of the semester, all the participants completed a version of the commonly used “post-traumatic growth inventory” that had been slightly reworked to refer to their feelings over the last couple of weeks – such as whether they had experienced a sense of closeness with others over that time or had an appreciation for each day.

Near the end of the semester, all the participants re-took this same revamped version of the growth inventory, thus providing a before and after measure of their general outlook and behaviour. Importantly, the 100 students who’d been through a breakup also took the classic version of the inventory, rating how much they felt they had changed for the better in the same domains (such as closeness to others and life appreciation, among others) but specifically as a result of their relationship trauma.

Comparing early- and late-semester scores on the revamped growth inventory, there was no evidence for positive change, and no evidence that the students who’d been through a break-up showed any more improvement than the students who had not. In contrast, the break-up students did report feeling that the trauma had changed them for the better. Moreover, this perception of growth was higher for students who previously described themselves as more optimistic and who found their breakup more distressing.

Owenz and Fowers believe these findings are consistent with the idea that the perception of growth after trauma is illusory, arising from a (positive) re-appraisal of the situation. Colloquially we might invoke Freud and call this a defence mechanism – looking on the bright side as a way to cope (something that the more optimistic students, and more distressed students, were more inclined to do). More generally, the researchers acknowledge that actualpositive growth may be a reality for some people, but they think it unlikely for most.

Future research might paint a different picture. The current findings pertain to young people in a specific culture going through a specific kind of trauma, and they were tested over a relatively short time frame. For now, though, these authors and others believe the burden is on advocates of the existence of post-traumatic growth to provide more robust evidence for their claims, especially using study designs that do not rely purely on people’s subjective and retrospective reports of change. The current situation – where post-traumatic growth is considered a reality based on limited research – Owenz and Fowers find “…particularly worrisome, given the rapid move from research ‘documenting’ post-traumatic growth to interventions and self-help books designed to promote an approach to trauma that remains questionable.”

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/11/29/new-findings-suggest-post-traumatic-growth-may-often-be-illusory/(accessed 7.12.18)

Explaining the power of curiosity – to your brain, hunger for knowledge is much the same as hunger for food

Curiosity is a welcome trait in many respects and is the fuel that powers science. Yet literature is filled with fables that warn of the seductive danger of curiosity (think of how Orpheus loses his wife Eurydice forever after he succumbs to the temptation to glimpse at the underworld). In real life too, we all know the regret that can follow if we give in to curiosity – glancing at a private message that we shouldn’t have, for instance, reading a TV review when we know it contains spoilers, or trying out what happens if you put metal in a microwave (tip: don’t).

From whence does curiosity derive such power over us? One answer lies in the brain. In a pair of brain-imaging studies published as a preprint at bioRxiv – aptly titled Hunger For Knowledge: How The Irresistible Lure of Curiosity Is Generated In the Brain – Johnny King Lau and his colleagues have shown that curiosity appears to be driven by the same neurobiological process as physical hunger.



The researchers laid the groundwork for their brain-scan research with a small behavioural experiment in which hungry volunteers were shown either magic tricks or pictures of tempting food, and then presented with a lottery wheel. This wheel provided a visual presentation of the odds of a gamble (which varied from trial to trial) – if they won, they would have an increased chance at the end of the experiment to learn how the trick was done or to eat the food; if they lost, it was more likely they would suffer a mild but unpleasant electric shock at the end of the experiment. Each trial the volunteers rated their curiosity about the trick or the desirability of the food, and then chose whether to take the gamble or not.

The main finding here was that curiosity and hunger both swayed the volunteers’ decision-making. Above and beyond the actual odds on any trial, the volunteers were more likely to take gambles when they were more curious about the magic or more tempted by the food, even at the risk of suffering an electric shock.

This led Lau and his colleagues to hypothesise that curiosity fuels a physiological wanting or craving, similar to hunger. To test this, they repeated the set-up with more volunteers and this time scanned their brains too. The results showed that, whether influenced by hunger or curiosity, when their participants opted to take the gamble, activity was greater in a key region of the brain known as the striatum, which is known to be associated with motivation and reward. Moreover, when driven to make the gamble, the participants showed a greater disconnect between the striatum and the sensorimotor cortex, indicative perhaps of a discounting of the physical risks of their decision (I would add a caveat: it is always difficult to interpret the functional meaning of brain activity, especially in exploratory work of this kind, so this interpretation should probably be considered tentative).

Similar findings emerged from a second brain-imaging study in which curiosity was provoked by obscure, intriguing trivia quiz questions rather than by magic (a typical question was “What is the only food that never spoils?”). In this case, if the participants opted to gamble, and won, then they increased their chance of finding out the answer later. Again, opting to gamble to satisfy curiosity, or hunger, was associated with greater activity in the striatum, and a greater disconnect between striatum and sensorimotor cortex.
s
Lau’s team said their findings show that “curiosity biases our decision-making by recruiting the same incentive motivation process as extrinsic rewards (e.g. foods).”

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/12/03/explaining-the-power-of-curiosity-to-your-brain-hunger-for-knowledge-is-much-the-same-as-hunger-for-food/(accessed 7.12.18)

Σεξουαλικός Προσανατολισμός

Ο Σεξουαλικός προσανατολισμός αποτελεί μια πτυχή των 2 φύλων που προκύπτει από την προγεννητική σεξουαλική διαφοροποίηση του εγκεφάλου.

Η Σεξουαλική συμπεριφορά εξαρτάται σε μεγάλο βαθμό από το πώς αυτή η διαδικασία της βιολογικής διαφοροποίησης προχωρά, με κεντρικούς παράγοντες τα γονίδια, τις σεξουαλικές ορμόνες και τα συστήματα του εγκεφάλου που επηρεάζονται.

Η βιολογική προοπτική για τον σεξουαλικό προσανατολισμό έρχεται ίσως σε αντίθεση με τις άλλες πεποιθήσεις, οι οποίες παρέμειναν σιωπηλές σχετικά με την προέλευση της ετεροφυλοφιλίας, ενώ αποδίδουν την ομοφυλοφιλία στη δυναμική της οικογένειας, στην εκπαίδευση, στην πρόωρη σεξουαλική εμπειρία, ή στην ελεύθερη επιλογή. Χωρίς, φυσικά, να μπορεί να αποκλειστεί όλα αυτά να παίζουν ρόλο.



Παρά τις διαφορετικές και αντικρουόμενες ερμηνείες για τους μηχανισμούς που οδηγούν στον ομοφυλοφιλικό προσανατολισμό, σήμερα, η απόλυτη επιστημονική βεβαιότητα είναι ότι η ομοφυλοφιλία δεν αποτελεί ασθένεια.



Ίσως, αυτή η βεβαιότητα να φαντάζει κοινότοπη, όμως, εκτός του ότι επιτεύχθηκε με μεγάλες προσπάθειες, προάγει ένα σημαντικό συμπερασμό:

αφού η ομοφυλοφιλία δεν είναι ασθένεια, δε μπορεί και δε χρειάζεται να θεραπευτεί.

Η δεοντολογική απαγόρευση στη θεραπεία δεν πρέπει να ληφθεί όμως ως φρένο στην επιστημονική έρευνα των μηχανισμών που ελέγχουν το σεξουαλικό προσανατολισμό των ανθρώπων.

Η μελέτη της επιστημονικής αλήθειας μπορεί να αποβάλει απεχθείς καταδιώξεις καθώς και προκαταλήψεις.



«Όλες οι ανθρώπινες συμπεριφορές έχουν αίτια και λόγους, ανεξάρτητα από το αν η συμπεριφορά καθορίζεται ως φυσιολογική ή όχι.

Η ομοφυλοφιλία γίνεται καλύτερα αντιληπτή ως ένα τελικό κοινό μονοπάτι σεξουαλικής δραστηριότητας, που παρουσιάζει πολλές διαφορετικές πηγές, μερικές συγκρουόμενες, μερικές μη συγκρουόμενες και αρκετές όπου μονάχα υποθέσεις είναι δυνατές»

Βαϊδάκης Ν. Η Σεξουαλική Συμπεριφορά του Ανθρώπου. Κεφ. 5ο, σελ.177. Εκδ. ΒΗΤΑ, 2005



Η ανάπτυξη της σεξουαλικής ταυτότητας: από την παιδική ηλικία και την εφηβεία έως την ενήλικη ζωή



Ο συνδυασμός των χρωμοσωμάτων δεν είναι αρκετός, από μόνος του, για να προσδιορίσει τη σεξουαλική συμπεριφορά ενός ατόμου ως αντρική ή ως γυναικεία.

Για να καταστεί δυνατή η προσέγγιση αυτού του θέματος επινοήθηκαν πολλά χρόνια πριν η έννοια της ταυτότητας και του ρόλου του φύλου.



Με τον όρο «ταυτότητα φύλου» εννοούμε το να αισθάνεται κανείς ως άνδρας ή ως γυναίκα και με τον όρο «ρόλος του φύλου» εννοούμε πώς αυτό εκφράζεται προς τα έξω, προς τους άλλους.

Από την παιδική ταυτότητα του φύλου μεσολαβεί μια λανθάνουσα περίοδος μέχρι την εφηβεία, που αποτελεί το μεγάλο σταθμό της σεξουαλικότητας.

Συνεπώς η νεανική ταυτότητα φύλου, η εφηβική σεξουαλικότητα και η εφηβική μορφολογία του σώματος συμβάλλουν, κάτω από συνεχείς περιβαλλοντικές επιδράσεις, ώστε να φθάσει κανείς στην τελική έκφραση της ταυτότητας και του ρόλου του φύλου.

Φαίνεται ότι η ανάπτυξη της σεξουαλικής ταυτότητας είναι πολυπαραγοντική και διαχρονική, αρχίζει από την ενδομήτρια ζωή και συνεχίζεται μετά τη γέννηση, όπως γίνεται και με την ανάπτυξη του σώματος μας.

Από τους ψυχοκοινωνικούς παράγοντες, η κοινωνική μάθηση παίζει σημαντικό ρόλο στην εδραίωση και ενίσχυση μιας συμπεριφοράς που καθορίζεται από βιολογικούς παράγοντες.



Πολλές είναι οι θεωρίες που έχουν προσπαθήσει, από πάρα πολλά χρόνια, να μελετήσουν το σεξουαλικό προσανατολισμό και να εξηγήσουν τη σεξουαλική συμπεριφορά.

Έτσι υπάρχουν μη βιολογικές θεωρίες, όπως οι ψυχαναλυτικές, οι θεωρίες της συμπεριφοράς και της κοινωνικής προσαρμογής, αυτή των πρώιμων σεξουαλικών εμπειριών, οι θεωρίες της κοινωνικής μάθησης (κοινωνικός κονστρουξιονισμός).

Ανάμεσα στις βιολογικές ερμηνείες ξεχωρίζουν η γονιδιακή υπόθεση, οι ορμονικοί παράγοντες, μελέτες σχετικές με την ανατομία του σώματος, την ανατομία του εγκεφάλου και διαφόρων λειτουργιών του εγκεφάλου.

Τέλος, υπάρχουν γνωσιακές μελέτες που στηρίζονται σε διάφορες θεωρίες (ανοσοβιολογική θεωρία κ.ά.).



Σίγουρο είναι πως όλες αυτές οι θεωρίες που έχουν αναπτυχθεί μέσα από πολλές μελέτες, συμβάλλουν στη διερεύνηση των μηχανισμών που ελέγχουν τη σεξουαλική συμπεριφορά των ανθρώπων και, ταυτόχρονα, στην κατανόηση της ανάπτυξης της σεξουαλικής ταυτότητας και του ρόλου του φύλου, τα οποία αποτελούν κεντρικό κομμάτι της προσωπικότητας του ατόμου.

ΠΗΓΗ:

http://www.sexologia.gr/medical-issues/item/78-sexual-behavior(accessed 6.12.18)

The Surprising Effects Of Stress On Your Brain

“When we are afraid, when we are threatened in any way, our cortisol levels go up.”



Stress can literally shrink your brain, new research suggests.

Middle-aged people with high levels of the ‘stress hormone’ cortisol also perform worse on memory tests than those with average levels of the hormone.


Common approaches such as mindfulness, moderate exercise and better sleep can all help reduce stress.

Professor Sudha Seshadri, who led the study, said:


“In our quest to understand cognitive aging, one of the factors attracting significant interest and concern is the increasing stress of modern life.

One of the things we know in animals is that stress can lead to cognitive decline.

In this study, higher morning cortisol levels in a large sample of people were associated with worse brain structure and cognition.”

The study involved brain scans of 2,231 people who also had their cortisol levels tested.

Cortisol is a hormone that rises in the body with stress levels.


The tests revealed that those with higher levels of cortisol had smaller brain volumes and worse memory.


However, no one in the study had signs of dementia.

Dr Justin B. Echouffo-Tcheugui, the study’s lead author, said:



“Cortisol affects many different functions, so it is important to fully investigate how high levels of the hormone may affect the brain.

While other studies have examined cortisol and memory, we believe our large, community-based study is the first to explore, in middle-aged people, fasting blood cortisol levels and brain volume, as well as memory and thinking skills.”

Professor Seshadri said:


“The faster pace of life today probably means more stress, and when we are stressed, cortisol levels increase because that is our fight-or-flight response.

When we are afraid, when we are threatened in any way, our cortisol levels go up.

This study adds to the prevailing wisdom that it’s never too early to be mindful of reducing stress.”

SOURCE:

https://www.spring.org.uk/2018/12/stress-brain.php(accessed 6.12.18)