Blog Post #3: Learning Styles / False Memories

    I believe that most people have heard of the term "learning styles" before, and many have also heard of the three most prominent types: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. I have heard of these terms many times throughout my years as a student and I was convinced that learning styles were a proven, scientific basis for how people process and retain knowledge. However, I could never determine what my own learning style was and always wondered how some people found just one style useful for learning. I thought that I was an outlier since I benefitted from all three learning styles rather than having a prominent one. While completing this lesson, I discovered that there is no scientific basis for the concept of learning styles at all. It is actually said to be ineffective to limit children to just one learning style because all three of the styles work to educate students in various ways. 

    The professor in the video clip gives the perfect example of learning the shape of a country. How could an auditory learner ever remember the shape of a country if they do not benefit from visual learning? That's like saying you could describe the color red to a blind person. They will never understand the concept of color because they cannot see. There is no way to describe a shape of something as complex as a country in any type of memorable way without a visual representation. This part of the lesson interested me the most because I am pursuing a degree in education. There is no other career field that this type of pseudoscience pertains to more. I plan on using all of the learning styles to effectively educate my students because now I know that individuals do not benefit from one dominant style.

    In the second case, I learned about the idea of false memories. It was very interesting to discover that there is very little correlation between memory recall accuracy and the confidence of the accuracy of the person retelling the story. After watching the TED Talk, it was shocking to discover that in a study of 300 people found guilty of crimes they did not commit, 75% were due to faulty eye witness memory. Eye witness accounts are held to a high regard in the court of law, but it seems as though a majority of them are incorrect. This is just one small study so more need to be conducted to be sure of this conclusion. However, even if only a handful of people are serving years in prison for crimes they did not commit, it is still far too many. There truly needs to be a reevaluation of the justice system in the United States because that is just unacceptable.