THE EFFECT OF COGNITIVE-STYLE AND MODE OF PRESENTATION ON LEARNING-PERFORMANCE

The effect of text-plus-text versus text-plus-picture computer present ation conditions, and the students' cognitive styles, on learning perf ormance was investigated. In the text-plus-text condition, the learnin g material content described the working of car braking systems. The t ext-plus-picture condition consisted of text with additional pictorial information. Fifty-nine 15-16-year-old students in a secondary school were randomly assigned, within sexes, to one of the conditions. Havin g worked through the computer presented material, they were given a po st-test overall learning performance. Immediately following this, they did the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) (Riding, 1991) which measures an individual's position on two cognitive style dimensions; Verbal-Im agery and Wholist-Analytic. It was found that the Verbal-Imagery cogni tive style and presentation condition interacted in their effect on ov erall learning performance (p<.05). In the text-plus-picture condition Imagers were superior to Verbalisers, while the text-plus-text condit ion Verbalisers did better than Imagers. It was also observed that Ima gers used more diagrams to illustrate their answers than Verbalisers. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for instructi on.