Are there three kinds of intelligence, and should we speak to them?

I’ve got bad news for fans of the so-called learning styles — visual, auditory, kinesthetic or tactile. They have been discredited time and again, but the neuromyth proves stubborn, and many teachers still believe — and teach to — the myth. Reading about similar myths around intelligence, and intelligence testing, I came across one study that suggested that, rather than summing up all human intelligence with a number (via an IQ test), it makes more sense to talk about at least three different aspects of intelligence, or mental networks: short-term or working memory, reasoning processes, and verbal ability.

At the risk of reinforcing what might well turn out to be another neuromyth, I started wondering if it made sense to teach, and speak, to these different kinds of intelligence. If so, what would it look like?

If you were particularly strong in short-term or working memory, for example, would it help you to be taught (or spoken to) in ways that served those kind of smarts? The most recent research suggests that the average person can handle up to 4 chunks of information in short-term memory when focusing in the near term. That memory decays pretty quickly, but you can retain surprisingly complex bits of information in chunks for brief periods of time. We’ve all had the experience of chanting a phone…