Three Facets of Visual and Verbal Learners: Cognitive Ability, Cognitive Style, and Learning Preference

The authors examined the hypothesis that some people are verbal learners and some people are visual learners. They presented a battery of 14 cognitive measures related to the visualizer–verbalizer dimension to 95 college students and then conducted correlational and factor analyses. In a factor analysis, each measure loaded most heavily onto 1 of 4 factors: cognitive style (such as visual–verbal style questionnaires), learning preference (such as behavioral and rating instruments involving visual–verbal preferences in multimedia learning scenarios), spatial ability (such as visualization and spatial relations tests and verbal–spatial ability self-ratings), and general achievement (such as tests of verbal and mathematical achievement). Results have implications for how to conceptualize and measure individual differences in the visualizer–verbalizer dimension and cognitive style in general.