VERBALIZING-VISUALIZING COGNITIVE STYLES AND USE OF IMAGERY IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

The present research explored the individual differences in verbalizingvisualizing cognitive styles of university students in Pakistani culture. This represents the fundamental knowledge on cognitive styles in Pakistan. Study I (phase I) was conducted to establish the evidences of test-retest reliability of Verbal-Imagery Cognitive Style Analysis (VICS; Peterson, 2005) test. The sample for test-retest reliability was 81. The test-retest coefficient showed stability at retest (r = .58, p < .01) on the verbal tasks and (r = .71, p < .001) for the imagery task on the VICS test. In phase II (part I), alpha coefficient was computed on a sample of 427 students for the VICS and Extended Cognitive Style Analysis- Wholistic-Analytic (Extended-CSA-WA; Peterson, 2005) tests. Alpha coefficient was much satisfactory showing internal consistency of .81 for the VICS and .82 for the E-CSA-WA. Phase II (Part II) of the present study was conducted to explore individual differences in verbalizing-visualizing cognitive styles. The association and difference of the cognitive styles with variables like gender, age, subject groups and academic achievement were explored. The findings revealed allocation of cognitive styles. Styles were allocated through verbal-imagery (V/I) ratios and wholistic-analytic ratios. Ratios were calculated on median reaction times. Individual differences in cognitive styles emerged as verbalizer-visualizer and little style. Significant gender differences were identified as verbalizing-visualizing and little style, and nonsignificant gender differences on wholistic analytic cognitive style dimension. Style combination and association was explored between verbalizing-visualizing, little style and wholistic-analytic, little style. There were nonsignificant associations between verbalizer-visualizer, little style and wholisticanalytic, little styles. Individual differences measuring specific information processing underlie verbalizing-visualizing cognitive styles was assessed by VICS task. The results revealed that student scored significantly different on median and mean reaction times of VICS tasks. This study further explored that male and female students would differ significantly on median and mean time taken on different VICS tasks. The hypothesis was partially supported on median reaction time of imagery tasks. The association between age groups and cognitive styles showed nonsignificant association between age groups and VICS tasks. Present study also explored mean difference of subject groups on VICS tasks. The association of subject groups (management sciences, social sciences, and natural sciences) with cognitive style (verbalizer-visualizer, little style) were explored. Results showed nonsignificant differences. Furthermore, the cognitive styles of high and low achievers were identified on cognitive styles. Results showed nonsignificant association between level of achievement and cognitive styles. Study II explored differential memory performance of the concrete and abstract sentences on a sample of 200 university students. Results showed that there is highly significant mean differences beween concrete and abstract sentences. Furthermore, this study revealed nonsignificant differences on an independent sample of 200, between instructional group (imagery instruction groups, n = 100) and non-instructional groups (instruction not given, n = 100). This research also explored a relationship of concrete and abstract sentences with cognitive style measures. This research would provide a fundamental knowledge on cognitive styles in Pakistan.