Are you really a "visual learner"?

Probably not, at least not in the way the idea promises. People do have preferences about how they like to take in information, and people do differ in some specific aptitudes. But the claim that matters, that you learn more when teaching is matched to your style, has rarely been tested properly, and the best tests mostly found no such benefit.

The idea comes in many flavours. One literature review counted 71 different learning-styles models. The best known sorts people into visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. Its central promise is called the meshing hypothesis: give a visual learner pictures and a verbal learner words, and each will learn more.

Testing that promise takes a particular experiment. You sort students by learning style, randomly give each group one of several teaching methods, and have everyone sit the same final test. Then you look for a crossover: the method that is best for one style must not be the best for another. When a panel of psychologists reviewed the field, they found that very few studies had used a design capable of showing this, that several of those contradicted the meshing hypothesis, and that there was virtually no evidence for the crossover. Of the few proper studies the panel could find, all but one had negative findings. Their verdict was that there is no adequate evidence base for putting learning-styles tests into everyday teaching.

The belief survives anyway. In a 2017 UK survey, 90% of academics agreed that the theory has basic conceptual flaws, yet 58% still agreed that students learn better in their preferred style, and a third had used it in the past year.

Other techniques have stronger evidence behind them. Another large review rated practice testing and spacing your study out as high-utility, because they help learners of different ages and abilities, while rereading and highlighting, the habits most students rely on, do not consistently help.