Cognitive style, gender and learning from multi-media materials in 11-year-old children

Eighty 11-year-old pupils (40 males and 40 females) from an urban primary school were assessed for cognitive style by means of the Cognitive Styles Analysis which indicated their positions on each of the two style dimensions, the Wholist-Analytic and the Verbal-Imagery. They then studied parts of three CD-ROM multi-media packages on science topics and after each, completed a multiple choice recall test. An indication of their performance on traditionally taught science was taken to be the performance on science SATs at 11 years. A comparison between multi-media and traditional work indicated that, (a) in terms of overall science performance (traditional and multi-media), Wholist-Imagers and Analytic-Verbalisers were superior to Wholist-Verbalisers and Analytic-Imagers, and (b) Analytics did better on traditional work than multi-media, with the reverse for the Wholists. With the multi-media materials there were three modes of presentation - picture and sound (PS), picture and text (PT), and picture, text and sound (PTS). Female Wholist-Imagers and Analytic-Verbalisers were better with PS than PT, with the reverse for Wholist-Verbalisers and Analytic-Imagers, while the opposite applied for males. For all style and gender groups performance was best with PTS. The findings are discussed in terms of their practical implications and further research.