The Auditory

There are people for whom the main thing are the sounds. They usually have very thin ear for music. The special sensitivity to the sounds is the only distinguishing feature of auditory.

Feature: very rich intonations and harmonics. When they listen to the interlocutor, they turn they head towards him, better to hear. No special preferences for food and clothing, they do not express. They are less interesting than kinesthetics and visuals on their characteristics.

To be fair to say that auditories are rare. Most of the people are either kinesthetics or visuals.

How to resolve conflicts

The reason for conflict between different psycho-types is misunderstanding. Kinesthetics are accused by visuals of disrespect and carelessness. Kinesthetics consider visuals as stiff for order. They irritate each other. Often this irritation leads to quarrels, disputes.

They are simply to prevent if you know the psychological characteristics of each other. Irritating is the close distance with kinesthetics? Talk to him, sitting at different ends of the table. You do not like the untidy clothes of your kinesthetic husband? Pick him those things that are not only comfortable but also beautiful. Then the conflict will disappear by itself.

You husband does not like you to sing in front of him? This is not because he does not love you. Just the sound for any false auditory is playing on his nerves. Do not sing in the presence of the spouse, do it when he is not there, give way. The solution can be found for any household or work conflict. It is important to begin to understand who you are and who are the people around you.

Study Advice for Kinesthetic Learners

December 13, 2010 By Clare 33 Comments

Is your teen a Kinesthetic Learner?

Kinesthetic learners are natural doers. They learn best when they discover things by doing them.

Kinesthetic learners aren’t necessarily suited to the traditional classroom. They learn best when they are physically active, or through learning activities that involve active participation.

Similar to Auditory Learners, Kinesthetic learners are not tremendous note-takers in class.

They can be fidgety and not enjoy sitting still for long periods of time, which sometimes comes across as disruptive or uninterested.

Is your child a Kinesthetic Learner?

Here’s a few main characteristics of Kinesthetic learners. See if these remind you of your child at all.

Kinesthetic learners:

are good with their hands. They enjoy building models and putting things together (or breaking them!)

are good at remembering things they’ve actually done before. E.g. cooking meals, putting together computers, jigsaw puzzles.

enjoy active learning at school, such as PE and science experiments.

enjoy playing sport.

like adventure books and movies.

become fidgety when sitting for a long period of time.

do not tend to have great handwriting or spelling.

Study Tips for Kinesthetic Learners

Kinesthetic learners should use study techniques that take advantage of their very hands-on brain.

Use flash cards

Flash cards make kinesthetic learners turn simple recall into a game. This makes them perfect for kinesthetic learners.

Simply write a question or topic suggestion on one side of a card, and the answer or a list of details they should remember on the other side.

The beauty of flash cards is that you can use them by yourself or with others. This easily allows you to take an active part in your child’s study while making it more fun for them.

Study in short blocks

Kinesthetic learners tend to have a relatively short attention span when they’re studying. But this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be doing just as much study as everyone else.

They should break their study up into shorter periods, but also take shorter breaks.

Forcing a kinesthetic learner to study for an hour at a time can be counter-productive. Regular 5 minute breaks can often be all they need to help them study far more.

Use plenty of examples when writing study notes

Many main points and concepts can be demonstrated with examples. Kinesthetic learners tend to make better associations with the examples than just the plain facts.

For example, most science concepts can be backed up with specific examples. E.g. instead of just remembering the formula, F = m × a, you can think of a cellphone being dropped from a second story balcony, and how force, mass, and acceleration are related. (The more personal or relatable to their everyday life the better)

Many of the arts subjects include many examples and case studies. Try and get your child to think of these ‘situations’, not just the plain facts.

Study with other people

Kinesthetic learners enjoy discussion. Talking about what they’ve learnt is often a great way to consolidate what they’ve learnt.

This tip is suggested with caution! This is because students often use ‘study groups’ as a way to hang out outside of school.

As a parent, you could try and have a discussion with your child about what they’ve learnt. Combining this with flash cards is a perfect way for parents to contribute to their child’s study.

Do something while you study

Tap a pencil, squeeze a stress ball, or do something to occupy the want to do something with their hands without becoming a distraction.

Just make sure that this doesn’t become a distraction itself!

A note about music while studying

Kinesthetic learners tend to be less distracted by music while studying than other people, although this is a personal debate.

I personally don’t study very well without listening to loud rock music. But I know that as soon as I get a little bit distracted, off it goes!

Your child should know what feels right for them, so let them have a play around and figure out what conditions they need to study best.

If you or your child is a Kinesthetic learner, and you have a suggestion for us to add to the list we’d love to hear it! Tell us here.

A cautionary note

Unfortunately, most people don’t fit perfectly into one of the four learning style categories.

So, what does this mean? It means that your child should explore different ways of learning and choose to use the ones that they find most useful.

The Physical (Bodily-Kinesthetic) Learning Style

If the physical style is more like you, it's likely that you use your body and sense of touch to learn about the world around you. It's likely you like sports and exercise, and other physical activities such as gardening or woodworking. You like to think out issues, ideas and problems while you exercise. You would rather go for a run or walk if something is bothering you, rather than sitting at home.

You are more sensitive to the physical world around you. You notice and appreciate textures, for example in clothes or furniture. You like 'getting your hands dirty, ' or making models, or working out jigsaws.

You typically use larger hand gestures and other body language to communicate. You probably don't mind getting up and dancing either, at least when the time is right. You either love the physical action of theme park rides, or they upset your inner body sense too much and so you avoid them altogether.

When you are learning a new skill or topic, you would prefer to 'jump in' and play with the physical parts as soon as possible. You would prefer to pull an engine apart and put it back together, rather than reading or looking at diagrams about how it works.

The thought of sitting in a lecture listening to someone else talk is repulsive. In those circumstances, you fidget or can't sit still for long. You want to get up and move around.

Common Pursuits and Phrases

Pursuits that involve the physical style include general physical work, mechanical, construction and repair work, sports and athletics, drama and dancing.

You may tend to use phrases like these:

That feels right to me.

I can't get a grip on this'

Stay in touch.

Get in touch with'

That doesn't sit right with me.

I have good feelings about this.

My gut is telling me'

I follow your drift.

Learning and techniques

If you use a physical style, use touch, action, movement and hands-on work in your learning activities. For visualization, focus on the sensations you would expect in each scenario. For example, if you are visualizing a tack (turn) on a sailboat, focus on physical sensations. Feel the pressure against your hand as you turn the rudder, and the tension lessening on the ropes. Feel the wind change to the other side, feel the thud as the sail swaps with the wind, and feel the boat speed up as you start the new leg.

For assertions and scripting, describe the physical feelings of your actions. For example, a pilot might script as follows: 'I feel the friction as I push the throttle forward to start my takeoff run. The controls start to feel more responsive as I check the airspeed, oil pressure and temperature. At takeoff speed, I pull back slightly, and I feel the vibrations of the wheels stop as the plane leaves the ground. After a few moments, I reach down and set the gear selector to up. I feel the satisfying bump as the gear stops fully up.'

Use physical objects as much as possible. Physically touch objects as you learn about what they do. Flashcards can help you memorize information because you can touch and move them around.

Keep in mind as well that writing and drawing diagrams are physical activities, so don't neglect these techniques. Perhaps use big sheets of paper and large color markers for your diagrams. You then get more action from the drawing.

Use breathing and relaxation to focus your state while you learn and perform. Focus on staying calm, centered, relaxed and aware. If you want to gain more control over your physical state, look up some references on Autogenics. This was a secret behind the great Russian athletic performances over the past few decades.

Use role-playing, either singularly or with someone else, to practice skills and behaviors. Find ways to act out or simulate what you are learning.

https://www.learning-styles-online.com/style/physical-bodily-kinesthetic

Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?

By: Daniel T. Willingham

How does the mind work — and how does it learn? Teachers' instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such gut knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?

Discussions of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners1 are common in educational literature, teacher-preparation programs, and professional development workshops. The theory that students learn more when content is presented in their best modality seems to make sense, seems to be supported by classroom experiences, and offers the hope of maximizing each child's learning by planning different lessons for each type of learner. For example, within one kindergarten class, the auditory learner could listen to stories about different holidays around the world, while the visual learner examined pictures of holiday celebrants, and the kinesthetic learner handled costumes and artifacts associated with the holidays. But is the theory correct? And, whether or not the theory is correct, might it not also be true that all of the kindergartners would learn the most about holidays by listening to stories, looking at pictures, and handling costumes?

Before we tackle the research on using modalities to enhance student learning, let's review a few things that cognitive scientists know about modalities.

1. Some memories are stored as visual and auditory representations — but most memories are stored in terms of meaning.

Cognitive psychologists have used formal laboratory tasks to investigate the role of modality in memory. An important finding from that research is that memory is usually stored independent of any modality. You typically store memories in terms of meaning — not in terms of whether you saw, heard, or physically interacted with the information. For example, your knowledge that a fire requires oxygen to burn is unlikely to be stored as a visual or an auditory memory. The initial experience by which you learned this fact may have been visual (watching a flame go out under a glass) or auditory (hearing an explanation), but the resulting representation of that knowledge in your mind is neither visual nor auditory.

How did cognitive scientists figure this out? An important clue that memories are stored by their meaning is the types of errors people make on memory tests. People who listen to a story will later confidently " recognize" sentences that never appeared in the story — so long as these new sentences are consistent with the story's meaning (Bransford and Franks, 1971). The same phenomenon is observed with purely visual stimuli. People rapidly lose the memory of the precise images that make up a picture story (e.g., whether a character faced left or right), but they retain the meaning or gist of the story (Gernsbacher, 1985).

These findings do not mean that you can't store auditory or visual information. You can, and you do. For example, if I ask you " Which is a darker green: a Christmas tree or a frozen pea? " you'll likely report that you would answer this question by visually imagining the two objects side by side and evaluating which is a darker green. If I ask you whether Bill Clinton or George W. Bush has a deeper voice, you will likely report that you would answer by generating an auditory memory of each.

The mind is capable of storing memories in a number of different formats, and laboratory research indicates that a single experience usually leads to more than one type of representation. When subjects view a picture story, they do have a visual representation of what the pictures look like, in addition to the meaning-based representation. They usually don't remember the visual representation for long, however, largely because when they see the pictures, they are thinking about what they mean in order to understand the story. If, in contrast, they were asked to remember visual details of the pictures and to ignore the story they tell, they would have a better memory for the visual details and the meaning-based representation would be worse.

2. The different visual, auditory, and meaning-based representations in our minds cannot serve as substitutes for one another.

Our minds have these different types of representations for a reason: Different representations are more or less effective for storing different types of information. Visual representations, for example, are poor for storing meaning because they are often consistent with more than one interpretation: A static image of a car driving on a snowy hill could just as well depict a car struggling up the hill or slipping backwards down the hill. And some concepts do not lend themselves well to pictures: How would one depict " genius" or " democracy" in a picture? On the other hand, the particular shade of green of a frozen pea would be stored visually because the information is inherently visual.

Because these different memory representations store different types of information, you usually cannot use one representation to substitute for another. This point is illustrated in an experiment by Chad Dodson and Arthur Shimamura (2000). They asked subjects to listen to two word lists and to judge whether or not each word on the second list (new words) had appeared on the first list (studied words), as shown below. The interesting twist was that each word on both lists was spoken by either a man (depicted by boldface) or a woman (depicted by italics). If a word had appeared on both lists, it might be spoken in the same voice (" Window") or in different voices (" Doctor"). The question is whether changing the gender of the voice (and, therefore, the auditory experience) influenced memory for the studied words.

LIST 1 LIST 2

Shell Doctor

Radio Fleet

Doctor Midnight

Table Thread

Window Reason

Window

Dodson and Shimamura found that whether the gender of the voice repeated or switched made no difference at all in remembering the word (75% versus 73% accuracy). That is, subjects were just as likely to remember " Doctor" as " Window." But when subjects judged that a word was on the first list, they also had to say whether a man or woman had said it. For this judgment, subjects were more accurate if the same gender voice spoke the word on the first and the second list (57%) than if the voice switched genders (39%). This experiment indicates that subjects do store auditory information, but it only helps them remember the part of the memory that is auditory — the sound of the voice — and not the word itself, which is stored in terms of its meaning.

3. Children probably do differ in how good their visual and auditory memories are, but in most situations, it makes little difference in the classroom.

Let's return to classroom education. We've said that some memories are stored visually, some auditorily, and some in terms of meaning. And it's likely that some students should have a relatively better visual memory or auditory memory. Shouldn't that mean that some students will more easily remember material that is presented in their stronger modality? It does, but what advantage would this superior memory provide for the student in a classroom? Teachers almost always want students to remember what things mean, not what they look like or sound like. For the vast majority of education, vision and audition are usually just vehicles that carry the important information teachers want students to learn. There are some limited types of materials for which an exact visual or auditory representation is helpful. The child with a good visual memory might have an edge over his peers in learning the location of capitals on a map of Europe, for example. That task is inherently visual. The child with a good auditory memory might learn the correct accent for a foreign language more quickly. (And the child with a good kinesthetic memory may have an edge in sports, handwriting, or painting.) But most of what we want children to learn is based on meaning, so their superior memory in a specific modality doesn't give them an advantage just because material is presented in their preferred modality. Whether information is presented auditorily or visually, the student must extract and store its meaning.

What does the research say about teaching to a child's strongest modality?

Because the vast majority of educational content is stored in terms of meaning and does not rely on visual, auditory, or kinesthetic memory, it is not surprising that researchers have found very little support for the idea that offering instruction in a child's best modality will have a positive effect on his learning. A few studies show a positive effect of accounting for students' best modality, but many studies show no effect (Kampwirth and Bates, 1980; Arter and Jenkins, 1979). The most comprehensive review was conducted by Kenneth Kavale and Steven Forness (1987); it is especially relevant for teachers because it includes many studies that tested the effectiveness of specific instructional approaches (as opposed to laboratory-based exercises). Kavale and Forness analyzed 39 studies using a technique called meta-analysis, which allows the combination of data from different studies. By combining many studies into a single statistical analysis, the researchers have greater power to detect a small effect, if one exists.

The initial results indicated that teaching in the child's best modality might have a small impact on learning, but closer inspection of the studies qualified that conclusion. The studies showing the largest effects had methodological problems. For example, a common error in studies of modality is a failure to ensure that the lesson plans and materials are equivalent in every way except modality (since that is the only way to be sure that any effect found is due to modality). Some studies have used materials specially-prepared for the visual and auditory conditions and then compared those to " regular teaching materials." It is possible that the specially prepared materials were more interesting or better organized than the " regular teaching" materials. This type of mistake calls the results into question because no one can tell if the results were caused by the change of modality or by the use of better materials. (The results may demonstrate that children learn more when teachers use better materials.) When Kavale and Forness limited the meta-analysis to studies with few or no such methodological problems, the modality effect disappeared.2

Kavale and Forness's meta-analysis provides substantial evidence that tailoring instruction to students' modality is not effective; across these many well-designed studies, such tailoring had no educational effect. But readers should bear in mind that it is impossible to prove a negative: We cannot be certain that modality theory is incorrect because it is always possible that we haven't looked for just the right sort of evidence. An inventive theorist could always create a new version of the theory with predictions that hadn't yet been tested. Nonetheless, the meta-analysis included a large number of studies that tested many different hypotheses.

Although it is technically true that the theory hasn't been (and will never be) disproved, we can say that the possible effects of matching instructional modality to a student's modality strength have been extensively studied and have yielded no positive evidence. If there was an effect of any consequence, it is extremely likely that we would know it by now.

Teachers should focus on the content's best modality — not the student's.

We have seen that the mind uses different representations to store different types of information and that these representations are poor substitutes for one another. That indicates that teachers should indeed think about the modality in which they present material, but their goal should be to find the content's best modality, not to search (in vain) for the students' best modality. If the teacher wants students to learn and remember what something looks like, then the presentation should be visual. For example, if students are to appreciate the appearance of a Mayan pyramid, it would be much more effective to view a picture than to hear a verbal description.

Many topics may call for information in more than one modality. In a unit on the Civil War, in addition to lectures and reading, it might be appropriate to include recordings of martial music used to inspire the troops, visual representations (maps) of battlefields, and perhaps a chance to handle the pack and equipment the troops carried so that students could appreciate their heft. Similarly, if students are to learn the form of an English sonnet, they should hear the stress forms of iambic pentameter, and then see a visual representation of it.

There are other ways in which modality of instruction can influence the effectiveness of a given lesson — but the influence applies to all children. Experiences in different modalities simply for the sake of including different modalities should not be the goal. Material should be presented auditorily or visually because the information that the teacher wants students to understand is best conveyed in that modality. There is no benefit to students in teachers' attempting to find auditory presentations of the Mayan pyramids for the students who have good auditory memory. Everyone should see the picture. The important idea from this column is that modality matters in the same way for all students.

If modality theory is so wrong, why does it feel so right?

The belief in modality theory is very common among teachers. More than 25 years ago, Arter and Jenkins (1979) reported that more than 90% of special education teachers believed it. Today, the prevalence of books describing the theory and lesson plans suggesting ways to implement it suggest that it still enjoys widespread acceptance. Why is the theory so widely accepted if there is no research evidence to support it?

One factor is that it fits with a more general assumption that many teachers hold: There are genuinely important differences among students in how they learn. Modality gives us an easily understood way to think about the differences among children and it offers a hopeful message — a relatively easy adjustment to teaching practice may provide a boost to kids who are struggling. Further, everyone else believes it. Although false, the truth of modality theory has become " common knowledge."

I think that these factors may contribute to the belief, but I also think that most teachers wouldn't believe the theory if it did not seem consistent with their own experience. There are two ways that a teacher might see what looks like evidence for modality theory in the classroom. First, a teacher who believes the theory may interpret ambiguous situations as support for the theory. For example, a teacher might verbally explain to a student — several times — the idea of " borrowing" in subtraction without success. Then the teacher draws a diagram that more explicitly represents that the " 3" in the tens place really represents " 30." Suddenly, the concept clicks for the student. The teacher thinks " Aha. He's a visual learner. Once I drew the diagram, he understood." But the more likely explanation is that the diagram would have helped any student because it is a good way to represent a difficult concept. The teacher interprets the student's success in terms of modality theory because she has been told the theory is correct and because it seems to explain her experience. But cognitive scientists have long known that we all notice and remember examples that confirm our beliefs and, without meaning to, ignore and forget evidence that does not.

Modality theory may also seem correct because, as we have discussed, children probably do differ in their abilities with different types of memories. I remember my daughter commenting (out of the blue, as 4-year-olds will) that her preschool teacher said " white" in a way that made the " h" faintly, but distinctly, audible. I was impressed that she had noticed this difference, remembered it, and could reproduce it. So my daughter may have a good auditory memory, and that might help her in certain tasks, such as remembering regional accents, should she decide to be an actress. It does not mean that I want her teachers to ensure that she receives primarily auditory input in her coursework, because her superior auditory memory will not help her when she needs to remember meaning. But it is easy to see how one might (mistakenly) believe that complex material would be easier for her to master if presented auditorily. Further, as the article The Content's Best Modality Is Key indicates, there are various ways in which modality does strengthen instruction (for all kids) — and it's easy to imagine that the effect has to do with a student's modal preference when in fact the effect is due to the content's best modality.

https://www.adlit.org/article/12446/