28 August 2013

Separating neuromyths from science in

education
Are you a creative, right-brain type? Do you learn best visually? These are all neuromyths
that badly need debunking, says a UK teacher and writer

By Tom Bennett Magazine issue 2932, published 31 August 2013

(Image: Andrzej Krauze)

WHEN it comes to making the classroom more “scientific”, there is good, solid research
into the best ways of helping children with dyslexia or autism, or encouraging kids to
become bilingual. And then there’s the other stuff.

Having recently completed my book Teacher Proof, which looks at whether research
translates into the classroom, I now have so-called educational neuroscience right at the top
of my hit list. It makes the attractive claim that understanding the brain will do everything
from boosting grades and curing ADHD to raising IQ and reversing ageing. Advocates are
not hard to find among both educationists and people who publish teaching materials.

But this can blind us to the fact that, historically, claims linked to neuroscience have often
turned out to be backed by scant evidence. Take the left brain/right brain idea. When the
late Robert Sperry was a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, he experimented on patients with epilepsy, and noticed that breaking the link
between brain hemispheres affected the ability to perform certain tasks. This led to
speculation that processing of language or learning is handled by a specific hemisphere.

A lot of subsequent research appeared to confirm this, notably the work of Gereon Fink,
then at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany, and John Marshall from the Radcliffe
Infirmary in Oxford, who used brain scans to support the idea of hemispheric dominance.
But then people began to speculate that the creative abilities were based in the right
hemisphere, and logical faculties in the left. This idea pervaded Western education for
years, with students taking left/right brain questionnaires so that their learning could be
tailored.

A year after their initial study appeared, however, Fink and Marshall repeated their work
and got opposite results. Today, we know that the hemispheres work together in
collaborative, complex ways, and that polarising personality types based on crude
generalisations is wrong.

But the message still isn’t getting through.In 2011, the No Right Brain Left Behind
campaign launched as an advocacy movement, backed by New Age guru Deepak Chopra
and British education adviser Ken Robinson. Daniel Pink’s 2005 book, A Whole New Mind:
Why right brainers will rule the future, topped the New York Times bestseller charts, and
was translated into over 20 languages. And left/right brain resources are still readily
available online.

Also on my hit list is an arguably even more pervasive theory, that of “learning styles”. The
most popular version was VARK (visual, auditory, read-write, kinaesthetic), put forward by
Neil Fleming, a teacher in New Zealand. This argued that every child has an individual
learning style, and that they learn, receive, process and retain information best when it is
delivered in a mode suited to their style. “V” children should be taught using pictures, film
and signs; “R” children using traditional written materials, and so on.

This idea was once endorsed by the UK’s Department for Education, and by its inspection
watchdog, Ofsted. But recent research has questioned the whole notion. For example, a
review by researchers at Newcastle University in the UK found up to 71 learning styles had
been described, mostly not backed by credible evidence.

Another theory still enjoying some credibility is that of “emotional intelligence”. This has
its origins in the US developmental psychologist Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligence”
theory, and was popularised by Daniel Goleman in his 1996 book, Emotional Intelligence.
If emotional intelligence exists, so the thinking goes, then students who receive training to
boost it will behave themselves, learn more effectively and mature more quickly. In 2005,
the UK’s Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) project made it a statutory
requirement that all state schools attend to pupils’ emotional intelligence as well as their
academic performance.

Early neurological evidence had suggested emotional intelligence and general intelligence
were linked, and could be tutored appropriately. But closer investigations showed that what
we know about the brain doesn’t stack up.

Many criticisms of emotional intelligence centred on the problems of defining something so

nebulous. And in 2005, US psychologist Frank J. Landy pointed out that there is no
correlation between nurturing emotional intelligence and high academic test scores. Most
worryingly, there is no evidence that the brain works in the way suggested by multiple
intelligence theory. Gardner himself says in his book that “there is little evidence to support
multiple intelligence theory”.

“There is no correlation between nurturing emotional intelligence and high academic test
scores”

Neuroscience is still going full steam ahead, boosted by a $100-million commitment from
the US government earlier this year, and by the European Union’s €150 million for brain
research. It looks likely there will be new claims to monitor.

Take the current hot topic of nootropics – so-called “smart drugs”. At present the only
drugs licensed for use to improve academic performance are stimulants such as
atomoxetine, for ADHD. Many unlicensed products are available, too, and one survey
quoted in Nature claimed that on some campuses, up to 25 per cent of students had taken,
or were taking, drugs alleged to enhance mental performance. “Alleged” is key here, since
there is very little evidence about either the efficacy or long-term safety of such drugs.

None of the above is to deny the power of neuroscience to revolutionise how we teach by
better understanding the brain and the way we learn. But it’s surely time we inoculated
ourselves against snake oil.
Neuromyths and why they persist in the
classroom
Posted by PRATEEK BUCH, on Tuesday 7th of January, 2014

“Teachers are like neurosurgeons, sculpting the brains of our children.” Newsletter from a
primary school in Essex

Teaching methods that are claimed to be based on how the brain works are being
extensively used in schools, but most of them are based on a misunderstanding or
misrepresentation of neuroscience. They’re based on neuromyths, promoting “alarming
amounts of misinformation.” (PDF)

Since debunking the pseudo-science behind Brain Gym in 2008, we have come across
many other neuromyth-based teaching methods – as set out below, many have been shown
to have little or no supporting evidence.

A literature review by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (PDF) looked at 18

teaching techniques that have a more plausible basis in neuroscience, assessing the strength
of supporting evidence and how they might impact on pupil performance. The majority of
these techniques – including ‘brain training’ software and personalised learning – have little
reliable evidence to support their use in education.

Results from a recent Wellcome Trust survey reveal how teachers apply these supposedly
brain-based techniques in the classroom, shedding light on why non evidence-based
methods persist. We also asked Ofsted about their role in seeking evidence behind teaching
methods. The EEF found that some interventions such as tailoring the school day to suit the
teenage brain are more promising, and warrant further research. The persistence of
neuromyths undermines the use of genuine brain research in the classroom, so everyone
that wants to apply lessons from neuroscience in education should ask for reliable evidence.

Brain Gym

Brain Gym is a programme of physical exercises that are claimed to boost learning abilities,
accompanied by pseudo-scientific explanations. Schools make a range of claims about how
Brain Gym helps their students learn – claims such as this, from a junior school in
Yorkshire: “We are finding some intresting (sic) results in the short time that we have used
the exercises… These movements can have a profound effect, developing the brain's neural
pathways through movement, just as nature intended.” An Ofsted inspection report of one
nursery says that children do Brain Gym exercises because they “make their brains work
better.”

Sense About Science debunked the pseudo-science behind Brain Gym, and the government
reported in 2009 that “Brain Gym had been 'criticised as being unscientific in a wide-
ranging and authoritative review of research into neuroscience and education.'” The EEF’s
literature review shows that physical exercise breaks may improve learning, although they
focussed on longer (30-minute) physical education lessons and not the short in-lesson
breaks promoted by Brain Gym – and there’s no evidence whatsoever for the pseudo-
science that Brain Gym promotes. And yet Brain Gym persists: a Google search suggests
that at least 180 UK schools continue to mention it on their website.

Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic Learning Styles

Some teachers give their students surveys to determine their preferred learning style –
Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic (V, A or K) – and label each student accordingly, tailoring
their lessons for each style of learning. We have noted many different claims about VAK
learning styles: an Ofsted report remarked that one school used the VAK method to
“engage pupils in the lesson, modelling the skills required to support pupils’ independent
work.” One infants school website says “we fully understand that young children in
particular learn by processing information through their senses – visual, auditory and
kinaesthetic. Each child has a unique learning style…”

Professor of education John Geake reviewed the evidence behind a number of neuromyths
in 2008, and said that while different parts of the brain interpret different types of sensory
information, teachers should not categorise children according to which one of either
visual, auditory and kinaesthetic styles they prefer. In his review of the evidence he argued
that people learn using different pathways in different ways at different times – “focusing
on one [learning style] flies in the face of the brain’s natural interconnectivity. VAK might,
if it has any effect at all, be actually harming the academic prospects of children.” And yet
this is a very persistent myth: education researchers in Amsterdam and Bristol found that
93% of UK teachers in their sample thought that “Individuals learn better when they
receive information in their preferred learning style (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic),”
which as neuroscientist Daniel Willingham sets out, this is known to be a misconception.

It is difficult to know when teachers use a mixture of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic
methods to teach all children in a class (i.e. a lesson with a variety of approaches, taught to
the whole class), and when they tailor teaching methods to individual pupils – the ‘full
VAK method.’ Not only is there no evidence to support this, it is plausible that it could
hinder the progress of children labelled and taught as one of V, A or K when they may
learn specific skills through other means. It may help to teach a whole class using a variety
of learning methods – but as with Brain Gym ‘working’ through simple exercise breaks,
VAK Learning Styles may ‘work’ if teachers ignore how it was intended to be used. As the
Wellcome Trust concludes from its survey of teachers who want to use neuroscience in the
classroom, “there were examples of teachers using certain approaches (e.g. Brain Gym®
and Learning Styles) for different purposes or in ways for which they were not originally
developed or conceived.”

Multiple Intelligences

Perhaps the most persistent neuromyth is that of Multiple Intelligences – that people have
separate and specific intelligences such as musical, visual-spatial, logical-mathematical and
naturalistic intelligence. Teaching materials and school websites continue to promote this
theory first proposed in a 1983 book by Howard Gardner – even though neuroscientists and
education experts have thoroughly discredited it as a model of how we learn. Here is
Professor John Geake on Multiple Intelligences: “Neuroimaging studies do not support
multiple intelligences; in fact, the opposite is true.” He describes how intelligence is a
general property that stems from a part of the brain called the frontal cortices, and that we
apply this intelligence to different tasks such as music, language and logic – our brain does
not have specific multiple intelligences.

Howard Gardner’s Multiple

Intelligence theory, 1983

Kinaesthetic (body smart)

Logical (number smart)

Linguistic (word smart)

Interpersonal (people smart)

Intrapersonal (myself smart)

Auditory (music smart)

Visual/spatial (picture smart)

Naturalistic (nature smart)

As with the learning styles theory, teachers attempt to cater for these ‘multiple
intelligences’ in their lessons. Over 600 UK school websites advertise their use of
Gardner’s discredited theory.

Left/right brain theory

The left brain/right brain theory claims that particular types of brain activity – logical,
artistic, linguistic and so on – are found in either the left or right hemisphere of the brain,
and that people can be thought of as predominantly left- or right-brained thinkers.
Neuroscience shows that most tasks involve both sides of the brain working together, with
no single area dominating – and yet 18% of teachers responding to the Wellcome Trust’s
survey on neuromyths say they currently use this theory in their teaching.

So why do discredited neuromyths persist in the classroom?

Why, when neuroscience has shown that there’s little or no evidence behind the majority of
teaching methods that claim to be based on neuroscience, do so many teachers use them?
The Wellcome Trust found that teachers use neuromyth-based methods even though they’re
not sure how effective they are – around half of the teachers responding felt that Learning
Styles, Brain Gym and the left/right brain theory had “some impact” on academic
performance, but that it was “difficult to measure.”

It could be because of how teachers access information about classroom methods:

according to the Wellcome Trust survey, teachers interested in using neuroscience in the
classroom most commonly come across neuromyth-based methods by word-of-mouth –
from their institutions (53%), individual colleagues (41%), and from training providers
(30%), who are often linked to those promoting neuromyths. If more teachers who are
interested in how the brain works asked for evidence behind teaching methods – or better
yet, took part in trials – it would be easier to identify neuromyths. The far lower percentage
of teachers finding out about supposedly brain-based methods directly from conferences
(9%), academic journals (5%) and even educational media (17%) indicates that teachers
need to be equipped to ask for reliable evidence on using brain-based teaching methods in
the classroom.

The persistence of neuromyths risks obscuring the potential that genuine neuroscience has
to improve teaching – the EEF and Wellcome Trust plan to fund research into this potential.
The evidence that emerges will help inform classroom practice – but whose role is it to
ensure that teaching is based on evidence?

Who should Ask for Evidence behind teaching methods? Teachers? Ofsted? Parents?
Governors?

Ofsted describes its mission as “raising standards, improving lives.” Shouldn’t asking for
the evidence behind teaching methods be a crucial element of this mission? We have found
hundreds of examples of Ofsted reporting neutrally on a school’s use of a neuromyth-based
teaching method. We asked Ofsted how their inspectors evaluate what happens in the
classroom; they replied that “during an inspection, inspectors will always look to see how
the school itself seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions it uses, and then
how the school’s leaders use this evaluation to modify or replace the intervention. Some
schools are very good at this, others less so” (emphasis added). So schools self-evaluate,
without necessarily looking at independent evidence. There are also rarely adequate
controls (matched groups of children who didn’t experience Brain Gym or weren’t
separated as V, A or K leaners) to allow teachers to judge whether the method in question
improves performance versus not using it – all we have is self-reported correlation, not
causation.

With limited resources, it is understandable that Ofsted inspectors do not themselves carry
out rigorous evaluations of each and every teaching method they encounter, but inspectors
could look at the EEF’s Toolkit, or search the Institute of Education’s Evidence for Policy
and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) database, or simply ask
education experts whether an intervention has any supporting evidence. If they did, their
reports on brain-based techniques could include a simple indication of whether they’re
likely to be effective or not.

A senior Ofsted official wrote to us to say that some interventions might work through a
form of the Hawthorne effect, where the simple fact of doing something different improves
results. This raises an intriguing ethical question– is it right for teachers to use methods that
are known to be based on myths, if they act as a placebo? Should teachers be expected to be
familiar with evidence about the effectiveness of classroom techniques, much as doctors
are? Should Ofsted play a role by checking for evidence with independent experts?

Without critically evaluating classroom methods using the best available evidence, Ofsted
will continue to neutrally report on neuromyths, reporting on the use of neuromyths that
leave parents ill-informed about neuroscience in the classroom. Further, students will
continue to be taught using techniques that have no supporting evidence. There remains a
strong case for better use of reliable evidence on the use of neuroscience in the classroom,
which means teachers, governors, parents and inspectors asking for evidence.

http://askforevidence.org/articles/neuromyths-and-why-they-persist-in-the-classroom

How to respond to learning-style believers

9 June 2015 by Cathy Moore

“What do you mean, I shouldn’t accommodate people’s learning styles? You can’t tell me
people don’t learn differently! I see it in the classroom all the time!”

Maybe you’ve heard that from a classroom presenter (I have). Or maybe you’ve heard this
from a client:

“Be sure to include narration for the audio learners! And add lots of drag-and-drops for the
kinesthetic people.”
 Learning styles have been popularized by well-intentioned
people, including possibly your professor of instructional design. However, the claim that
we have to adapt our design to accommodate different learning styles has been repeatedly
debunked by research.

Then why do people cling to the belief? Let’s look at one reason why learning styles are so
appealing and how we can respond to the believers on our team.

First, the research

These resources link to or summarize research that debunks learning styles:

 My post Learning styles: Worth our time? summarizes some studies and has extensive
discussion in the comments.
 My post How to be a learning mythbuster has links to easy, approachable debunking
articles to pass to clients or teammates.
 The Debunking Club has compiled several other resources. This TED talk in particular could
be useful for your colleagues and clients.
 Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown et al. is a readable
summary of research.
 Urban Myths about Learning and Education by Pedro De Bruyckere et al. debunks several
myths.

Debunk carefully — morals are at stake!

The myths that put people into special categories, such “visual learners” or “digital
natives,” have a powerful emotional appeal. As a result, questioning them can backfire. I’ve
certainly received some impassioned responses, and I know that some of you have, too.

In Urban Myths about Learning and Education, the authors suggest that these myths could
be a type of moral panic. In a moral panic, believers claim that there are stark differences
between groups of people and that only moral people care about these differences.

Emotions can run high thanks to the believer’s moral commitment. For example, imagine
that I believe in learning styles and I’m a member of a team on an elearning project. I
notice that no one is planning any narration, so I say earnestly, “Don’t forget the auditory
learners!” Someone else says, “Oh, that’s all been debunked.”

I’ve never heard that before. How might I respond?

“Are they saying I’m an idiot?” I think. “I’m not! I care about the learners! The team is just
finding excuses to take shortcuts. They don’t care about the learners like I do!” So I fight
back, maybe by debating learning styles or just resisting others’ ideas.

This is the “worldview backfire effect,” according to the authors of The Debunking
Handbook, available for free from SkepticalScience.com.

How can we respond?

One way to avoid the backfire effect could be to frame your disagreement in a way that
doesn’t threaten the believer’s moral position. That way, you can keep their emotions from
rising and clouding their thinking.

For example, you might first acknowledge the believer’s compassion and then offer
alternatives that meet even more important needs, so agreeing with you won’t harm their
position as someone who cares about the learners.

You can also offer an alternative explanation for the situation that the myth is intended to
explain, or suggest that the people who originally promoted the myth did so for their own
profit, both techniques recommended by research cited in The Debunking Handbook.

For example, if you have a learning-style believer who wants redundant elearning narration
“for the auditory learners,” you might say the following:

“That’s an important point. We need to consider how people’s preferences might affect
their learning.”

 This acknowledges the believer’s compassion while reframing learning styles as

preferences.

“For example, research shows that people learn best when they can control the pacing,
which is actually hard to do if we use a narrator for everything. So if we added a narrator
for the subset of people who prefer narration, we’d take away the control over pacing that
everyone needs. If we made the narration optional, we’d still have to spend a lot of the
budget on it, which reduces our ability to use techniques that everyone needs.”

 We’re suggesting that the believer’s compassion can be extended to even more people by
letting go of the focus on one group.

“Unfortunately, much of the research that seems to support learning styles was done by
people who sell the learning style inventories or otherwise profit from them. Independent
research doesn’t support the idea of changing our approach to accommodate learning styles,
but it does say we should give everyone lots of practice over time. Since there’s more
research support for spaced practice, it would be most effective to use our budget to design
more practice for everyone instead of hiring a narrator for a few.”

 We suggest that the myth was created by someone for their own purposes, sucking all the
compassion out of it, and then build up the believer again by giving them a different way
to show their compassion for the learners. Of course, the alternative approach could be
anything supported by research, not just spaced practice.

I’m saying that all learners are exactly the same. Not.

Some learning-style believers say that science fans like me just want to turn learners into
robots, denying their individuality.

I say that the best way to honor people’s individuality isn’t to shove them into simplistic
categories so we can pour information into them, but to provide them with the respectful
support they need to drive their own learning, at their pace. And if we use techniques that
independent studies show actually work, we’re respecting learners’ time and showing true
compassion for their needs.

I’ve focused here on just the “moral panic” appeal of learning styles. I think they’re
appealing for other reasons as well, including:

 They’re fun like a Facebook quiz is fun. “I’m a visual learner!” Or maybe you’re the rare
and neglected nasal learner.
 They make intuitive sense. Of course we all have different strengths and learning
preferences. What’s not supported is the claim that we need to adjust instruction to
match learning “styles.”
 It’s currently popular to put people into categories of all types, so learning styles fit into a
larger trend — says I, the high-D INTJ “overachieving” myopic height-advantaged
asparagus avoider and bad singer.
 They’re easy. Simple rules like “Add pictures for the visual learner” are easy to apply. It’s
“hard” to use more effective design approaches, such as designing realistic practice
activities or helping learners gauge their own progress.
 A belief in learning styles encourages people to use a wider variety of media in their
instruction, which when done well is a good thing. However, pointing out the invalidity of
learning styles doesn’t mean, “All instruction must be text!” That’s a false alternative. The
content and nature of the task should determine the media. The authors of Make It Stick
sum it up this way: “When instructional style matches the nature of the content, all
learners learn better, regardless of their differing preferences for how the material is
taught.”
 Learning styles are still being taught by some instructional design programs.

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2015/06/how-to-respond-to-learning-style-believers/
The Illusory Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has never been validated

Posted Nov 23, 2013

Many people find the idea that there are many different types of intelligence very
appealing. Howard Gardner disparages IQ tests as having limited relevance to real life, and
argued that there may be as many as eight different kinds of intelligence that apply in
diverse areas of human functioning.[1] Gardner’s claims are very similar to those made
about “emotional intelligence” being a special kind of intelligence distinct from IQ that
may even be more important for success in life than traditional “academic” intelligence.
Although Gardner’s claims have become popular with educators, very little research has
been done to establish the validity of his theory. The few studies that have been done do not
actually support the idea that there are many different kinds of “intelligence” operating
separately from each other. Although there certainly are important abilities outside of what
IQ tests measure, referring to each one as a special kind of “intelligence” has little scientific
support and doing so may only create needless confusion.

A very attractive theory, but does it have any substance?

General intelligence versus multiple intelligences

According to mainstream intelligence research, there exists a broad form of mental ability
known as “general” intelligence that underlies a wide range of narrower, more specific
abilities. IQ tests are intended to provide a measure of this broad general ability, as well as
some of the specific ones. Howard Gardner objected to the idea of general intelligence,
arguing instead that IQ tests actually measure distinctly narrow academic skills and denied
that there is a single general ability that cuts across many different domains. Instead, he
argued that there are separate domains of ability that deserve to be called “intelligences” in
their own right, and that ability in one domain is unrelated to ability in other domains.
Specifically, he argued that IQ tests measure linguistic/verbal and logical/mathematical
intelligences, which happen to be valued in schools. The other domains of intelligence he
claimed were musical, bodily-kinesthetic (skill in using the body to solve problems),
spatial, interpersonal (understanding other people), intrapersonal (ability to understand
oneself and regulate one’s life effectively), and naturalistic (recognising different kinds of
plants and animals in one’s environment). He also considered, but finally rejected the
existence of two further kinds of intelligence: spiritual (understanding the sacred) and
existential (understanding one’s place in the universe). These latter two did not meet his
rather liberal criteria for an “intelligence”, “biological potential to process information that
can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value
in a culture” (Furnham, 2009).

Sounds nice, but just how much support does the theory have?

The idea that there are multiple independent kinds of intelligence appeals to egalitarian
sentiments because it implies that anyone can be “intelligent” in some way or another, even
if they are not lucky enough to possess a high IQ (Visser, Ashton, & Vernon, 2006a). This
egalitarian view was expressed in an article by Dr Bernard Luskin. He suggested that the
theory is accepted by the self-esteem movement, because according to this view no-one is
actually "smarter" than anyone else, just different. This all sounds warm and fuzzy, but
making people feel good is not an index of scientific validity. Dr Luskin correctly states
that IQ tests are reasonably accurate at predicting how well a person will do at certain
school subjects, but they do not gauge a person’s “artistic, environmental and emotional
abilities.” Since they were not designed to measure these latter things, this is not
controversial. However, there is considerable evidence that IQ tests predict more than just
school performance (Visser, Ashton, & Vernon, 2006b) but I will let that pass. What I take
issue with here is his incredible assertion that “Today, the concept of multiple intelligences
is widely acknowledged.” He makes additional statements about “wide agreement” about
Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and that it is “widely accepted.” Just who
exactly acknowledges, agrees with and accepts the theory is not made clear though. In fact,
it is fair to say that among academic scholars who study intelligence there is very little
acceptance of Gardner’s theory due to a lack of empirical evidence for it. A critical review
of the topic by Lynn Waterhouse in 2006 found no published studies at all that supported
the validity of the theory. Even though Gardner first made his theory public in 1983, the
first empirical study to test the theory was not published until 23 years later (Visser, et al.,
2006a) and the results were not supportive. Multiple intelligences theory can hardly be
described as scientifically generative.
If no-one is smarter than anyone else, does that mean I'm as smart as this guy?
Source: Personal photo

Can multiple intelligences be tested?

Dr Luskin notes that the different types of “intelligence” proposed by Gardner are hard to
measure and difficult to assess. Some of the proposed intelligences, such as interpersonal
and intrapersonal, are difficult to even define clearly. Gardner himself has declined to
specify what he thinks the components of the various intelligences might be or how these
might be measured and has only provided nebulous descriptions of them (Waterhouse,
2006a, 2006b). If no-one is really sure what these supposed “intelligences” really are or
how to assess them, then generating scientific support for them would appear to be quite
difficult. This might go some way to explain the dearth of empirical research on this topic.
However, I am aware of at least two studies (Furnham, 2009; Visser, et al., 2006a) that
made preliminary attempts at creating operational definitions of these intelligences and
developing tests to assess them. As I will show, neither one provided much support for
Gardner’s theory.

Trait vs. ability approaches

Since Gardner has not exactly been forthcoming with guidelines on how to assess his
proposed intelligences, researchers have had to improvise. As noted earlier, proponents of
“emotional intelligence” have claimed that it is something distinct from existing concepts
of general intelligence and have actually attempted to develop ways of assessing a person’s
“EQ” as opposed to IQ. These methods have taken either a “trait” or an “ability” approach,
and the two studies on multiple intelligences that I will look at have adopted each of these
approaches respectively. The trait approach is based on asking people to self-estimate their
own skill in a given area. This is based on the theory that people mostly have a fairly good
idea of how skilled they really are in many areas of life. Even though this might sound a bit
naïve, it turns out for example, that when people are asked to self-estimate their general
intelligence, they usually give reasonably accurate answers (Furnham, 2009). The ability
approach on the other hand gives people tests with right or wrong answers and scores them
on the accuracy of their results. Traditional IQ tests use this latter approach. Developing an
“objective” measure of emotional intelligence poses special challenges, and I have
highlighted some of these in a previous post. Similarly, developing tests for some of the ill-
defined abilities that Gardner refers to has its own problems. However, if the attempt is not
made, the theory cannot be validated.

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A pattern that seems to emerge from research on emotional intelligence is that “trait”
measures of it tend to be highly correlated with existing measures of personality traits, such
as the Big Five, while ability measures tend to be correlated with measures of general
intelligence. The latter finding undermines the claim that EQ is distinct from IQ. If
“emotional intelligence” can be understood largely in terms of existing concepts of
personality and general intelligence, then it is doubtful that the concept adds anything new
to our understanding (Schulte, Ree, & Carretta, 2004). A similar pattern of results emerges
from the two studies on multiple intelligence that I will review next.

For some, eight is not enough.

Intelligent personalities?
Furnham (2009) examined a self-report measure of multiple intelligences[2] and its pattern
of correlations with a measure of the Big Five personality traits. One striking result was that
the eight “intelligences” were highly intercorrelated with each other, contrary to the theory
that they are all supposed to represent separate and unrelated domains. In fact, each one
was positively correlated with at least four others, and naturalistic intelligence was
positively correlated with all seven others. This would suggest that people who scored
themselves highly in one domain also tended to score themselves highly in several others.
Furthermore, there were many correlations between the eight intelligences and the Big Five
traits: all eight intelligences were correlated with at least one of the Big Five, and each of
the Big Five was correlated with two or more of the intelligence scores. Openness to
experience and extraversion in particular were each correlated with five different
intelligence scores respectively (but not all the same ones).

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Of course self-report measures have their limitations, especially for measuring skills. For
example, the positive correlation between extraversion and five of the “intelligences” might
be due to the fact that extraverted people tend to have a highly positive view of themselves
and therefore might think they are naturally good at lots of different things. (Although it is
possible they really are as good as they say they are, but this is hard to tell without
independent measures.) On the other hand, openness to experience is positively correlated
with objective measures of general intelligence and of knowledge, so the positive
correlations between openness to experience and five of the “intelligences” in Furnham’s
study make sense.

Separate abilities from general intelligence or not?

Gardner’s various intelligences are supposed to reflect specific abilities, so Visser et al.
(2006) developed a set of ability tests, two for each of the proposed eight intelligences. The
authors attempted to assess whether these ability measures were independent of a measure
of general intelligence and of each other. Gardner has argued that apparent positive
correlations between tests of diverse mental abilities occur because most of these tests are
language based, so they all involve a common core of linguistic intelligence to complete
them.[3] To overcome this objection, the authors used non-verbal measures of the non-
linguistic intelligences. If Gardner’s theory that the eight types of intelligence are largely
independent of each other were true, then the results for each domain should not be highly
correlated with each other. However, this did not turn out to be the case. Many of the tests,
particularly those measuring some form of cognitive ability, were highly positively
correlated with each other. Additionally, most of the ability tests had positive correlations
with general intelligence. The exceptions were the tests of musical and bodily-kinesthetic
intelligence, which are non-cognitive abilities, and one of the tests of intrapersonal
intelligence. The authors concluded that the reason that the tests involving cognitive ability
were positively correlated with general intelligence is because they share a common core of
reasoning ability. Hence there seems to be a general form of reasoning ability that is
applicable across a wide range of ability domains, including linguistic, spatial,
logical/mathematical, naturalistic, and to a lesser extent interpersonal abilities. This
contradicts Gardner’s assertion that ability in each of these domains is largely separate from
ability in the other domains. However, it is consistent with the idea that a broad form of
mental ability underlies more specific abilities to a greater or lesser extent.

The authors concluded that Multiple Intelligences theory does not seem to provide any new
information beyond that provided by more traditional measures of mental ability. Hence,
trying to incorporate Gardner’s theory into educational contexts seems unjustified.
Waterhouse (2006b) also expressed scepticism about the value of applying a theory that has
not been validated in education, particularly when one of the aims of education is supposed
to be to impart up-to-date and accurate knowledge.

Intelligences or skills?

These two research studies do not support the specifics of Gardner’s theory of multiple
intelligences. Of course, this does not mean that non-cognitive abilities apart from general
intelligence are unimportant. There is abundant evidence that personal qualities, such as
motivation and social skills, matter a great deal to one’s success in life, and I don't think
anyone is really saying otherwise. What is questionable though is describing any talent or
ability that happens to be regarded as important as a distinct “intelligence”. We already use
the word “skill” to describe how well a person is able to apply their abilities and knowledge
in a given area of life. Most people are capable of developing a variety of different skills,
but this does not necessarily mean they require a different kind of “intelligence” for each
one, so using the term this way is simply arbitrary and confusing (Locke, 2005). Similarly,
most people would acknowledge that people can be “smart” in the sense of exercising good
judgement and decision making even if they do not have a particularly high IQ. Vice versa,
high IQ people can easily make poor decisions, e.g. when emotions or self-interest cloud
their reasoning. Again we already have a word for this capacity for good judgment:
wisdom. However, I don't think many people would agree that everyone is equally wise.
Perhaps there are special abilities that deserve to be called “intelligences” in their own right
that have not yet been identified. However, there is no scientific justification for simply
inventing special kinds of “intelligence” without evidence just so people can feel good
about themselves.

In conclusion, Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences looks to be a confused and

nebulous set of claims that have not been empirically validated. Many of Gardner’s
proposed “intelligences” appear to be explainable in terms of existing concepts of
personality and general intelligence, so the theory does not really offer anything new.
Additionally, some of the proposed “intelligences” are poorly defined (particularly
intrapersonal) and others (e.g. musical) may be more usefully thought of as skills or talents.
The popularity of Gardner’s theories in educational contexts may reflect its sentimental and
intuitive appeal but is not founded on any scientific evidence for the validity of the
concept.

Footnotes
[1]
Gardner has changed his mind a number of times about the exact number of intelligences
over the years, but for convenience I will consider eight in this article as these are the ones
that have been researched.
 This measure was originally published in a book written for a lay audience called What’s
[2]

Your IQ? by Nathan Haselbrauer, published by Barnes and Noble Books.

[3]
Gardner is not correct. IQ tests have incorporated non-verbal subtests since the 1930’s.

Image Credits

Multiple Intelligence Theory, Wikimedia Commons

Photo of Einstein with the author taken at Madame Tussaud's, London. Guess which one is
real!

Nine intelligences: Multiple Intelligences and Technology by Lupe Escobar

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References

Furnham, A. (2009). The Validity of a New, Self-report Measure of Multiple Intelligence.

Current Psychology, 28(4), 225-239. doi: 10.1007/s12144-009-9064-z

Locke, E. A. (2005). Why emotional intelligence is an invalid concept. Journal of

Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 425-431. doi: 10.1002/job.318
Schulte, M. J., Ree, M. J., & Carretta, T. R. (2004). Emotional intelligence: not much more
than g and personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 37(5), 1059-1068. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2003.11.014

Visser, B. A., Ashton, M. C., & Vernon, P. A. (2006a). Beyond g: Putting multiple
intelligences theory to the test. Intelligence, 34(5), 487-502. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.02.004

Visser, B. A., Ashton, M. C., & Vernon, P. A. (2006b). g and the measurement of Multiple
Intelligences: A response to Gardner. Intelligence, 34(5), 507-510. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.04.006

Waterhouse, L. (2006a). Inadequate Evidence for Multiple Intelligences, Mozart Effect,

and Emotional Intelligence Theories. Educational Psychologist, 41(4), 247-255. doi:
10.1207/s15326985ep4104_5

Waterhouse, L. (2006b). Multiple Intelligences, the Mozart Effect, and Emotional

Intelligence: A Critical Review. Educational Psychologist, 41(4), 207-225. doi:
10.1207/s15326985ep4104_1

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201311/the-illusory-theory-
multiple-intelligences