Neuromyths and knowledge about intellectual giftedness in a highly educated multilingual country.

Abstract

Understanding brain functioning and intellectual giftedness can be challenging and give rise to various misconceptions. Nonetheless, there seems to be a widespread fascination and appetite for these subjects among the lay public and diverse professionals. The present study is the first to investigate general knowledge about the brain, neuromyths and knowledge about giftedness in a highly multilingual and educated country. Starting from and extending two seminal studies on neuromyths, several novel statements on intellectual giftedness have been included in order to explore knowledge and misconceptions concerning giftedness. Our sample (N = 200) was composed of Luxembourgish education professionals, including students in educational science and cognitive psychology, thus allowing to analyze responses in general and according to training and professional profiles. Specifically, Group 1 consisted of teachers and futures teachers (n = 152). Group 2 consisted of other education professionals and psychology students (n = 48). Despite the size and the unbalanced distribution of the sample, our findings indicate a good level of general knowledge about the brain and learning (71.3% of correct responses in average) which does, however, not preclude the presence of the typically observed original neuromyths. Thus, we replicate the classical finding that misconceptions on Learning Styles (70% of error rate) and the Multiple Intelligence Theory (71.5% of error rate) are the most represented, both in (future and in-service) teachers and other education professionals. Moreover, the present sample also revealed a high presence of misconceptions on intellectual giftedness. Limitations and future directions are discussed.