Consumers Favor "Right Brain" Training: The Dangerous Lure of Neuromarketing

Over the past decade the neuromarketing of educational products has become increasingly common. Researchers have however expressed concern about the misapplication of neuroscience to education marketing, fearing that consumers may be deceived into investing in apparently "brain-based" products under the misapprehension that they will be more effective. This study provides the first demonstration that these fears are justified. We presented 180 participants with one of four advertisements for an identical educational program, named either "Right Brain" or "Right Start" Training; the advertisements either did, or did not, include an MRI brain image in one corner. Results demonstrated that "Right Brain" training was deemed more interesting, educationally valuable, and scientifically strong than an identical product named "Right Start" training. Advertisements including an unrelated brain image enhanced ratings of scientific rationale. These results confirm that by implying a strong scientific basis, "brain-based" product names are remarkably effective in implicitly manipulating consumer opinion

Priming vs. rhyming: orthographic and phonological representations in the left and right hemispheres

The right cerebral hemisphere has long been argued to lack phonological processing capacity. Recently, however, a sex difference in the cortical representation of phonology has been proposed, suggesting discrete left hemisphere lateralization in males and more distributed, bilateral representation of function in females. To evaluate this hypothesis and shed light on sex differences in the phonological processing capabilities of the left and right hemispheres, we conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 assessed phonological activation implicitly (masked homophone priming), testing 52 (M = 25, F = 27; mean age 19.23 years, SD 1.64 years) strongly right-handed participants. Experiment 2 subsequently assessed the explicit recruitment of phonology (rhyme judgement), testing 50 (M = 25, F = 25; mean age 19.67 years, SD 2.05 years) strongly right-handed participants. In both experiments the orthographic overlap between stimulus pairs was strictly controlled using DICE [Brew, C., &amp; McKelvie, D. (1996). Word-pair extraction for lexicography. In K. Oflazer &amp; H. Somers (Eds.), Proceedings of the second international conference on new methods in language processing (pp. 45&ndash;55). Ankara: VCH], such that pairs shared (a) high orthographic and phonological similarity (e.g., not&ndash;KNOT); (b) high orthographic and low phonological similarity (e.g., pint&ndash;HINT); (c) low orthographic and high phonological similarity (e.g., use&ndash;EWES); or (d) low orthographic and low phonological similarity (e.g., kind&ndash;DONE). As anticipated, high orthographic similarity facilitated both left and right hemisphere performance, whereas the left hemisphere showed greater facility when phonological similarity was high. This difference in hemispheric processing of phonological representations was especially pronounced in males, whereas female performance was far less sensitive to visual field of presentation across both implicit and explicit phonological tasks. As such, the findings offer behavioural evidence indicating that though both hemispheres are capable of orthographic analysis, phonological processing is discretely lateralised to the left hemisphere in males, but available in both the left and right hemisphere in females.<br /

Why Right-Brain Teaching is Half-Witted: A Critique of the Misapplication of Neuroscience to Education

Educational tools claiming to use “right-brain techniques” are increasingly shaping school curricula. By implying a strong scientific basis, such approaches appeal to educators who rightly believe that knowledge of the brain should guide curriculum development. However, the notion of hemisphericity (idea that people are “left-brained” or “right-brained”) is a neuromyth that was debunked in the scientific literature 25 years ago. This article challenges the validity of “right-brain” teaching, highlighting the fact that neuroscientific research does not support its claims. Providing teachers with a basic understanding of neuroscience research as part of teacher training would enable more effective evaluation of brain-based claims and facilitate the adoption of tools validated by rigorous independent research rather than programs based on pseudoscience

Why Right-Brain Teaching is Half-Witted: A Critique of the Misapplication of Neuroscience to Education

Educational tools claiming to use "right-brain techniques" are increasingly shaping school curricula. By implying a strong scientific basis, such approaches appeal to educators who rightly believe that knowledge of the brain should guide curriculum development. However, the notion of hemisphericity (idea that people are "left-brained" or "right-brained") is a neuromyth that was debunked in the scientific literature 25 years ago. This article challenges the validity of "right-brain" teaching, highlighting the fact that neuroscientific research does not support its claims. Providing teachers with a basic understanding of neuroscience research as part of teacher training would enable more effective evaluation of brain-based claims and facilitate the adoption of tools validated by rigorous independent research rather than programs based on pseudoscience

The effect of orthographic uniqueness and deviation points on lexical decisions: Evidence from unilateral and bilateral-redundant presentations

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The effect of word length on hemispheric word recognition: Evidence from unilateral and bilateral-redundant presentations

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On the other hand: the costs and benefits of left-handedness

Left-handers have been persecuted by right-handers for millennia. This right bias is evident cross-culturally, linguistically (right is literally and figuratively ‘right’, with lefties being described as ‘gauche’, ‘sinister’ and ‘cack-handed’), and environmentally (e.g., equipment design, including power tools, ticket machines, and lecture-room desks). Despite this, the proportion of left-handers has remained constant at approximately 10% of the hominid population, implying that though there are costs associated with left-handedness (if there were not, the proportions of left- and right-handers would be 50:50), left handers must also enjoy fitness advantages that maintain the genes for left-handedness in the population. This paper reviews the costs and benefits of being left-handed, exploring research examining the effects of handedness on brain structure, cognitive function, and human behaviour. The research confirms a variety of left-hander advantages, including some cognitive superiorities, higher wages, and greater sporting and fighting prowess. On the other hand, left-handedness is also associated with significant fitness costs, including an increased risk of accidents, higher substance abuse susceptibility, and earlier death, in comparison with right-handers. In sum, left-handedness confers both costs and benefits, with the latter outweighing the former, maintaining the genes for left-handedness in the population

The attentional blink reveals sluggish attentional shifting in adolescents with specific language impairment

Rapid processing deficits have been the subject of much debate in the literature on specific language impairment (SLI). Hari and Renvall (2001) [Hari, R. &amp; Renvall, H. (2001). Impaired processing of rapid stimulus sequences in dyslexia. Trends in cognitive sciences, 5, 525&ndash;532.] proposed that the source of this deficit can be attributed to sluggish attentional shifting abilities. That is, more time is required to shift attention between stimuli. To test this claim, 26 adolescents with SLI (divided into two subgroups to control for differences in non-verbal intelligence) and 14 controls were presented with a rapid serial visual presentation task. In this task participants were asked to detect two visual targets presented serially with distracter items with varying inter-target intervals (i.e., time difference between targets). This task was designed to elicit an attentional blink (AB). The AB describes the phenomenon whereby non-impaired individuals are less likely to report the second of two targets presented within 200&ndash;500 ms of each other. After controlling for group differences in non-verbal intelligence, the SLI group was found to be significantly less accurate than the control group at successfully reporting the second target at inter-target intervals of 100, 200, 300, 400 and 800 ms. The results were interpreted to suggest that adolescents with language impairments have an AB which differs from non-impaired individuals in both magnitude and duration.<br /