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I’ve wrongly assumed it to be real for a long time. Thanks for mentioning this! I just skimmed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5366351/

As it stands, I believe evidence suggests that people may report to prefer a style, but it has no measurable impact on their learning.




Which continually surprises me and I wonder what content they test the learning on.

Is it on primary education topics or advanced topics?

I certainly can't imagine learning mathematics or coding from a lecture without seeing the symbols. How else would I keep it all in my head[1]?

I don't know what the other 'learning styles' are so I can't really comment on them.

[1] - Surely some with physical impairments, i.e., the blind are capable of doing this as there are blind programmers who make amazing things. But that belies a lifetime of practice of not relying on one's sight.


There is some evidence that different styles work better for learning different topics but not that different individuals learn better with different styles. So e.g. learners might do better on average learning math when visual learning is emphasized and English when auditory learning is emphasized but a given individual will not learn both subjects better if both emphasize their "preferred" style. (Just examples here, not making any particular claims about learning math vs English)


Ah, thanks for the clarification!

The claim that the learning styles were debunked didn't jive with me because I had a very bad experience being taught German in school using only talking/speaking. And I feel like I need to have things written down to remember them. (For example, I cannot reproduce sounds - like foreign names - very easily, and I have hard time sorting them out. But if you write it down, I can relate it to other sounds and remember it.)


If an individual prefers a style of learning - wouldn't that enable them to enjoy learning for longer periods of time and deeper? Maybe not more efficiently but overall definitely has an impact.




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