Author Archives: Andrew Watson

If you’ve watched educational videos lately, you’ve probably noticed that captions are EVERYWHERE. In fact, caption technology has evolved in recent months so that captions now highlight individual words as spoken, rather than present entire phrases or sentences one after another. But what if this well-intentioned practice is actually interfering with learning?

Given their prevalence, I’ve just assumed that we have good reasons to include captions. At the same time, people do LOTS of things that contradict evidence — so perhaps the time has come to investigate my assumption.

I started by casting a wide net. I went to Google Scholar and put in “captions and subtitles.” The first hit sounded a confident tone: “Video Captions Benefit Everyone.”

To be sure we understand the confidence of this study, let’s read the first two sentences:

Video captions, also known as same-language subtitles, benefit everyone who watches videos (children, adolescents, college students, and adults).

More than 100 empirical studies document that captioning a video improves comprehension of, attention to, and memory for the video.

If in fact captions promote understanding, focus, and recall for practically everyone who watches, we’ve got as close to a slam dunk as I can imagine.

Let’s check to be sure…

Focus on Definitions

As is so often the case, we should start by defining our terms, questions, and expectations clearly.

Because this blog focuses on education, I’m interested captioned videos used to help K-12 students learn stuff. That is: research into captions when people watch movies for fun don’t fit my question.

For the time being, I’m also going to focus on same-language captions: a video where the narrator speaks in English and the captions show the narrated words in English. Of course, a student who speaks Spanish at home might benefit from seeing Spanish subtitles for a video in English, but that’s a very different research questions.

For similar reasons, I’ll start by focusing on research into neurotypical students. I can imagine that students with particular diagnoses might — as part of their learning profile — have different requirements than their peers. It’s probably helpful to start by understanding how most people learn, and then adapt that practice as needed for individuals.

(To be clear: we will ultimately be interested in different-language captions, and in the potential benefits for different categories of learners. To start with, I simply want the most basic question answered.)

I’d like to find several rigorously designed studies all pointing in the same direction. I want sample sizes that rise above the trivial; I’d like plausible control groups; I’d like objective measures — not mere self-report. And so forth. After all, I shouldn’t tell you that captions are (or aren’t) a reseach-informed instructional practice if all the research I’m citing doesn’t meet basic standards.

Finally, if I’m really lucky, I’d like to have both research and theoretical frameworks pointing in the same direction.

Now that we’ve got some parameters in place, let’s return to that study and see what we find.

Working the Steps

I spend lots of my time double-checking (or triple-checking) “research-based” claims, so I’ve got a process to follow.

I won’t walk you through each step of the journey — it took a few hours — but the results are impressively clear.

First:

We have essentially no research that fits the criteria above.

No, really: we don’t have a pool of persuasive research giving us an answer one way or another.

That “Captions Benefit Everyone” study focuses on foreign-language captions, or on non-neurotypical learners, or on college students, or on self-report. LOTS of self-report.

I should explain, by the way, why self-report data don’t persuade most researchers: people are REALLY bad at knowing what helps us learn. College students might THINK they pay more attention, or remember better, when they see vids with captions. But unless we actually measure their attention, understanding, or learning, we shouldn’t actually make claims about attention, understanding, or learning.

When I asked Elicit.com to research this question, I found the same problem. The studies it summarized focused almost entirely on Chinese students watching videos with English captions. That research helps answer an important question — but it’s not the question I asked.

Second:

The study that comes the closest to answering my question suggests that captions might interfere with reading for not-at-risk students.

This study suggests that captions DO help at-risk 2nd and 3rd graders recognize words. But the not-at-risk students recognized fewer words with the captions on. Obviously we’re glad to have strategies to help at-risk students. But that’s not the big-picture question we started with.

(I’m honestly puzzled that captions benefit struggling readers…but because I don’t teach reading I’m not going to have a strong opinion here.)

Let’s Talk Theory

I noted above that I’d like to have both well-done empirical research AND a theoretical framework to answer my question.

Richard Meyer’s “redundancy principle” tells us that presenting the same information both verbally and visually at the same time increases cognitive load.

In his excellent book Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory in Action, Oliver Lovell gives a common example: conference presentations.

It’s a common practice for presenters to provide written information on their slides and then to read out that information during the presentation. To conventional audiences, this represents the presentation of redundant information. Only one presentation format is needed, either the written words, or the spoken words. (62)

That example sounds A LOT like captions, no?

A full explanation of the redundancy principle requires a blog post of its own. The short version goes like this:

• Because I read faster than others speak, I’m constantly reading ahead of the speaker’s current point in the text. I must therefore stop and go back multiple times. All this back-n-forth adds to my cognitive muddle.
• With captions, I have to focus either on the WORDS that the captions present or the IMAGES in the video — and that back-n-forth also adds to the cognitive work I have to do.

For the dual-coding folks reading this post, remember: dual coding advocates that words and images complement one another — not that they represent precisely the same information.

Putting It All Together

1. I found NO research with objective measures of neurotypical K-12 learners reading same-language captions. The one study that comes closest hints — but does not say — that captions might interfere with word recognition for early readers.
2. Meyer’s redundancy principle gives us a good reason to be VERY skeptical of claims saying that “captions benefit everyone.”
3. If you find research that matches the criteria above, please send it my way. I always want to keep this blog as up-to-date an accurate as possible.

In the meanwhile, here are my suggestions:

a) Be wary of claims that captions benefit most learners — especially neurotypical K-12 learners reading same-language captions.

b) Be ESPECIALLY cautious if the video includes cognitively complicated material — where cognitive load is already high.

c) Be aware of legal requirements, especially for students with diagnosed learning differences. Also, I myself would be more open to the benefits of captions for students watching videos in languages they don’t speak fluently. I haven’t done a deep dive into that research pool, but common sense suggests such captions could have real benefits.

Gernsbacher M. A. (2015). Video Captions Benefit Everyone. Policy insights from the behavioral and brain sciences, 2(1), 195–202. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732215602130

Linebarger, D., Piotrowski, J. T., & Greenwood, C. R. (2010). On‐screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy tool. Journal of Research in Reading, 33(2), 148-167.

Lovell, O., & Sherrington, T. (2020). Sweller’s cognitive load theory in action. John Catt.

Few topics lead to greater despair at Learning and the Brain conferences than “neuromyths.” Teachers cling to these “brain-based” beliefs despite the absence of research supporting them — and despite all the zealous debunking from our experts.

No:

• Learning Styles are not a thing;
• Left-brain/right-brain distinctions have no teaching implications;
• Fidget spinners don’t help students attend or learn;
• Power poses don’t matter;
• “Enriched environments” don’t benefit students;
• Brain gym doesn’t help…

This list could go on at wearying length.

Sadly, I’ve got even worse news. Belief in these myths extends across the globe, and persists despite all our best efforts to stamp them out. One recent article reports that 89.1% of teachers believe in the visual/auditory/kinesthetic learning style myth. (Please picture the ‘gnashing teeth’ emoji here.)

For all these reasons, scholars in this field search for the best ways to revise teachers’ misunderstandings. The article I just mentioned — published last year in Mind, Brain, and Education — offers a detailed narrative looking at different strategies and their (depressingly small) effects.

Rather than review those strategies, I want to back up a big step and consider a crucial problem in these efforts. I think that MANY efforts won’t work because we’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. Our misunderstanding begins with the word itself: “neuromyths.”

It’s All Stuff In The Head

The field of “Mind, Brain, and Education” brings together at least three different disciplines:

1. Mind = the study of mental function. We call that “psychology.”
2. Brain = the study of the physical object of the brain (and nervous system). We call that “neuroscience.”
3. Education = you know, teaching and schools and chalk dust.

The difference between mind and brain — between “psychology” and “neuroscience” — might seem too technical to merit our attention. After all, they’re both ways of studying “stuff going on inside the head.”

But we really must focus on that difference. If we don’t, the resulting confusion and mis-direction make our work less effective.

Let’s start with neuroscience: a kind of biology. If you’re looking at..

• brain regions — like the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex, or
• neurons, or
• myelin, or
• neurotransmitters…

…you’re talking neuroscience.

While neuroscience studies biological objects, psychology studies mental function. If you’re studying…

• attention, or
• motivation, or
• memory, or
• anxiety, or

…you’re talking psychology.

For most of the 20th century, these fields regarded each other with deep suspicion, and would be surprised that anyone would have trouble telling them apart. But in truth, the distinction can feel tricky to non-experts.

One way to distinguish between them is to ask: “what is the researcher doing to study the question?”

• If you can tap it with a scalpel or look at it with a microscope or an fMRI gizmo, it’s neuroscience.
• If you give students a test to see how much they remembered, or a questionnaire to see whether or not they paid attention, that’s psychology.

(I should be clear: I’m answering a complicated question with a few hundred words. I’m trying not to oversimplify, but reasonable people would want me to rephrase some of those sentences. If you want a deeper dive, check out this podcast where I discuss the question with Zach Groshell and Kris Simmers.)

Why the Difference Matters

Here’s a plausible logical chain:

1. Neuromyths result from a misunderstanding of neuroscience. (The clue is right there in the name!)
2. Therefore, we can reduce belief in neuromyths by teaching people accurate neuroscience.

But this logical chain starts with a flaw. Most neuromyths aren’t primarily neuroscience claims. Most “neuromyths” are primarily psychology claims.

For example: claims about “learning styles” rest fundamentally on claims about mental behavior. “Visual learners” learn one way; “auditory learners” learn another way.

In this claim, “learning” is a mental behavior — it’s psychology — because I should test it using psychological methods. For instance, I would “align instruction with students’ learning style” and see how much more they learn. (To be clear: students don’t learn any more. The claim is false. It’s a myth.)

When challenged, champions of learning styles theory might try to defend their claim with neuroscience terminology. But the theory itself isn’t about the electrical or chemical behavior of neurons; it’s fundamentally about the mental behavior of learners.

In brief, learning styles theory isn’t a neuromyth. If anything, it’s a pschyo-myth.

To keep this blog post relatively short, I won’t go through each “neuromyth” claim to demonstrate that it’s a “psychomyth.” But almost all of them are — including the ones that have the word “brain” in them. (I’m looking at you, “left-brain/right-brain” and “brain gym.”)

Why does this difference matter?

Because: we can’t debunk “neuromyths” by teaching neuroscience. The myths don’t rest on neuroscience.

Although well-meaning, these neuroscience education efforts almost certainly won’t succeed.

Opportunity Costs Matter

At this moment, I can imagine a reasonable-sounding objection: “teachers benefit from learning neuroscience even if that knowledge doesn’t change their neuromyths.”

I have three concerns with that response:

First: I’m skeptical that neuroscience knowledge does benefit teachers. I can’t think of any classroom teaching advice that derives from neuroscience, not psychology.

Second: if the goal is to reduce belief in neuromyths, let’s choose a strategy that actually reduces teachers beliefs in neuromyths.

Third: we’re talking an ENORMOUS amount of time here.

• In one PD intervention — described as “very brief” — teachers spent a “short” fifteen hours learning neuroscience.
• Another study looked at the effect of neuroscience courses in schools of education. A full term course — over forty hours — “showed no effect on beliefs in neuromyths.”

As a PD presenter in schools, I’m lucky to get three hours with teachers. The idea that we’ll devote fifteen hours — or forty hours — to an approach that probably doesn’t work seems…unwise.

Uplifting Conclusion

I’d love to offer one. Here’s the best I can do:

If you have a more effective strategy, please let me know!

Rousseau, L. (2024). Dispelling Educational Neuromyths: A Review of In‐Service Teacher Professional Development Interventions. Mind, Brain, and Education, 18(3), 270-287.

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological science in the public interest, 9(3), 105-119.

The US Department of Education recently released a video on eX/Twitter encouraging the use of “squishy toys” to calm students. In the video, an earnest school psychologist says that such toys help his students focus without distracting others.

The uproar that followed — “they’re vital!” vs. “they’re dreadful” — followed the usual eX/Twitter pattern.

Of course, here on this blog we’re interested in narrower questions than “are squishy toys good or bad?” We want to know:

• do we have a consistent body of research giving us useful guidance on using squishy toys in K-12 classrooms?
• if they have benefits, what are the boundary conditions? That is: perhaps they help some students but not others?
• what kind of benefits are we talking about here? At a minimum, I think we want students to focus better and learn more. In other words: if the benefit is “students like ’em,” that’s not a good enough reason to consider squishy toys a research-supported classroom tool.

So, what happens when we start investigating those questions?

The Home Team Looks Worried

When people offer teachers “research-based” advice, we’d like them to cite the research. That’s both common courtesy and common sense.

Sadly, the video itself — and the tweet that contains it — doesn’t provide a citation or link to any research. The school psychologist, as far as I can tell, is making an experienced-based claim, not a research-based claim.

Of course, teachers and school leaders rely on experience all the time, so this approach isn’t obviously ridiculous. At the same time, given that we can research a question like this, it’s surprising that the initial advice doesn’t take advantage of the research that is (almost certainly) out there.

So, what happens when we go looking for the research supporting the use of squishy toys?

Let’s imagine the following conversation:

ANDREW: You should take this medecine; research says so.

YOU: Tell me about this research.

ANDREW: It was done by a doctor who bleeds his patients to cure their fevers.

YOU: Wait…he bleeds his patients? That’s medical malpractice…it’s been out-of-date for decades, even centuries!

ANDREW: So what’s your point?

At this point, I suspect, you’d stop taking my medical advice.

When I asked Elicit.com to find research about using squishy toys in K-12 classrooms, the only relevant study it located notes that:

“Kinesthetic learners used the stress balls more consistently and their attention spans increased more when compared to other learners.”

This observation would be interesting if “kinesthetic learners” existed, and if we haven’t known for decades that learning styles theory isn’t supported by evidence. At a mimimum, we shouldn’t trust this study’s conclusions that squishy toys benefitted students.

To be clear, the study includes other key limitations:

• It’s a self-described pilot study, including 29 students.
• It mostly measures self-reported variables — not an especially persuasive foundation for teaching advice.

It’s not looking good for Team Squishy.

Don’t Stop Yet

I’ve tried two steps to verify the squishy-toy claim:

1. Check with the person who made the recommendation.
2. Look on Elicit.com.

Although those attempts didn’t pan out, we’ve still got several other avenues to pursue.

I checked with Scite.ai; it couldn’t even find that kinesthetes-love-squishy-toys study. (It’s REALLY rare for Scite.ai to come up short this way.)

I next went to ConnectedPapers.com to look for other studies surrounding that study; here’s the image it generated. (The study I started with is in the purple circle.)

So, I started poking around at the studies surrounding the first one. Of course, I didn’t look at them all — life is short. But, here’s what I found with some random checks:

• “Fidget spinners negatively influence young children with ADHD’s attentional functioning, even in the context of an evidence-based classroom intervention.” (This from the Graziano study right in the middle.) ¹
• “Due to a recent surge in popularity, fidget spinners and other self-regulatory occupational therapy toys have yet to be subjected to rigorous scientific research. Thus, their alleged benefits remain scientifically unfounded. Paediatricians should be aware of potential choking hazards with this new fad, and inform parents that peer-reviewed studies do not support the beneficial claims.” ²
• “Student performance was lower when they were allowed to use fidget spinners than when the fidget spinner was removed. The current study suggests that fidget spinners may cause a deficit in student performance. However, the effect of fidget spinners may actually lessen as the students habituate to the objects.” ³
• “Using a fidget spinner was associated with increased reports of attentional lapses, diminished judgments of learning, and impaired performance on a memory test for the material covered in the video. The adverse effect on learning was observed regardless of whether the use of fidget spinners was manipulated between‐subjects (Experiment 1) or within‐subjects (Experiment 2), and was observed even when the sample and analysis were limited to participants who came into the study with neutral or positive views on the use of fidget spinners.” ⁴

I could go on. From this quick investigation, I notice two important patterns.

First:

No one seems to be researching stress balls (a.k.a. “squishy toys”) at all. The ONLY study I found on that topic is the pilot study with the kinesthetic learners.

Second:

Scholars ARE studying fidget spinners … and not finding any good news. Whether you’re teaching K-12 students or college students, neurotypical students or students with ADHD, kinesthetic learners or students who really exist: none of them receives classroom benefits from a fidget spinner.

Third:

To be on the safe side, I looked for meta-analyses — both ones that focus on squishy toys, and ones focusing on fidget spinners.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t find ANY looking at squishy toys. And — equally unsurprisingly — I the fidget-toy meta-analyses sounded consistently discouraging notes. (For example, this one.)

My Current Conclusion

When I do this kind of research deep dive, I usually find conflicting evidence. As a result, I typically write a tentative, partly-yes and partly-no summary: “strategy X seems to work well with these students studying these things, but we don’t have good research outside that small group.” Or something like that.

In this unusual case, the research picture seems unambiguous to me:

1. We have NO reliable research showing that squishy toys benefit (or harm) students.
2. We have LOTS of research showing that fidget spinners provide few benefits, and can indeed interfere with learning.

If you have research that contradicts these conclusions, please let me know.

1. Graziano, P. A., Garcia, A. M., & Landis, T. D. (2020). To fidget or not to fidget, that is the question: A systematic classroom evaluation of fidget spinners among young children with ADHD. Journal of attention disorders, 24(1), 163-171. ↩︎
2. Schecter, R. A., Shah, J., Fruitman, K., & Milanaik, R. L. (2017). Fidget spinners: Purported benefits, adverse effects and accepted alternatives. Current opinion in pediatrics, 29(5), 616-618. ↩︎
3. Hulac, D. M., Aspiranti, K., Kriescher, S., Briesch, A. M., & Athanasiou, M. (2021). A multisite study of the effect of fidget spinners on academic performance. Contemporary School Psychology, 25, 582-588. ↩︎
4. Soares, J. S., & Storm, B. C. (2020). Putting a negative spin on it: Using a fidget spinner can impair memory for a video lecture. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 34(1), 277-284. ↩︎

I spend most of my professional life talking in front of groups of people. Specifically, I talk about psychology and neuroscience research — and the (careful!) application of those findings to classrooms.

For that reason, I feel quite comfortable writing blog posts about research-based teaching advice: most recently…

… how goals and feedback might motivate students, and

… the relative importance of enjoyment and/or skill in reading instruction, and

… the potential benefits of PBL.

And so forth.

In recent years, I’ve also been getting questions about presenting in public.

While that topic isn’t central to this blog, it might be helpful. After all, I know MANY people who read this blog present at conferences. And I bet many more people would like to.

So: a few quick thoughts.

1: You Do You

No, seriously.

I won’t present well if I’m trying to do (exactly) what you do, and you won’t present well if you try to do (exactly) what I do. We’re different individuals.

While I do think the advice below is broadly helpful, you should also NOT follow this advice if it encourages you to act like someone you’re not.

That is:

• If you try to be funny — because someone somewhere said “funny speakers are good!” — that advice will work only if you’re a funny person. If not, your audience will sense your discomfort (and your unfunniness) right away.
• If I try to get adults up and moving around (“Everybody Conga!”) because John Almarode is GREAT at getting people up and moving, I’ll feel deeply foolish. That’s just not my style. And my audience will know I feel deeply foolish. (They will probably also feel deeply foolish.)

And so forth.

2: You Do What You Say

When I’m giving a talk about avoiding working memory overload, I have to be especially careful to avoid working memory overload. If I don’t, my audience will remember my hypocrisy; they will not remember my content.

If you’re talking about retrieval practice, include retrieval practice. If you don’t, your audience will wonder why you didn’t use the teaching practice that you said was so important.

Ditto if you’re talking about mindfulness, or mini-white-boards, or forming relationships. Speakers who don’t do what they say risk looking like hypocrites.

By the way, this truth creates real problems for presentations on specific pedagogies. If my message is “students best remember ideas they learn through open-ended inquiry,” how can I best make that argument?

• If I give a presentation, then my medium contradicts my message.
• If I let teachers open-endedly explore their own pedagogical interests, they might not explore “open-ended inquiry.” Or, if they do, their inquiry might not arrive at the same conclusion I do.

My point here is not to be snarky, but to note a real challenge for champions of more “student-centered” pedagogical styles. If I give a talk about the inherent futility of giving talks…the paradox probably overwhelms my message.

3: Highlight Structure

Most talks condense LOTS of information into relatively short periods of time. In fact, one reason speakers receive invitations is: their expertise allows them to organize many ideas into a coherent (if complex) package.

Alas, the more info I condense into my talk, the harder my audience has to work to follow my argument. With each passing slide, they think more nervously: “Wait — how does THIS set of ideas connect to ALL THOSE PREVIOUS sets of ideas?”

For that reason, I think speakers should include a clear outline very near the beginning of the talk. And they should return to that outline frequently throughout the talk to indicate progress.

For instance, I’ve got an upcoming talk on the subject of “Rethinking Intrinsic Motivation.” That talk will begin with this outline:

Act I: Here’s what everyone thinks about intrinsic motivation.

Act II: David Geary wants us to RETHINK intrinsic motivation.

Act III: Most people think that this other theory contradicts Geary. But I think it aligns with — and adds to — Geary’s theory.

Act IV: In fact, we need to RETHINK the other theory to convert it from a “to do” list into a “to think” list. Here’s how we do that.

Notice, this initial outline stays fairly abstract. I say that Geary “wants us to rethink motivation,” but I don’t get specific. I don’t even name the other theory. And so forth.

As I make my way through the talk, I explicitly return to that outline and add in all those specifics:

“As you saw in Act II, Geary wants us to rethink intrinsic motivation from an evolutionary angle. For that reason, he argues, school should emphasize topics that we didn’t evolve to learn, not those that we do.

Now, in Act III…”

By starting with an outline, and by returning to it, I clarify my ideas. Even more important: I clarify the relationship among the ideas.

4: Presenting Online

Four quick rules to raise your online game.

a) My eyes should not be at the center line of the screen, but 1/3 of the way down from the top of the screen. Film and TV shows are shot with this “rule of thirds,” so my audience expects it. Eyes at the midline look odd.

b) For heaven’s sake, I must NOT let my laptop camera point up at my face — and therefore up my nostrils. That view is really unpleasant. I should prop the laptop on books so that it’s level with my face.

c) In daily conversation, we don’t typically get very close to the people we’re talking with. If my face is too close to the camera, I’m a “close talker.” The look is unsettling. So, I should move the camera back so that most of my torso is visible.

d) My background matters. If the room behind me is cluttered and unkempt, I look unprofessional. I should find a simple, classy look.

None of those guidelines is complicated; all of them improve online presentations.

In Sum…

Although speakers should be themselves, some guidelines improve almost all talks. I hope the list above proves helpful.