Visual or Symbolic, Analytic or Holistic: A Comparison of the Cognitive Styles of South-East Asian and Australian Students

Many factors are involved in the way an individual gains an understanding of Mathematics. Their cognitive style i.e. the way they code information for further processing in the brain is one of these. Riding and Rayner (1998) have a developed a model for the whole learning process which contains two dimensions of cognitive style. This study investigates the effect of cultural factors on cognitive style, looking particularly at the cultures of South-East Asia and Australia and the cognitive styles of students undertaking a first year university Mathematics course. Students from South-East Asia tended to have a more visual cognitive style than Australian students, particularly when they learnt to read first in a character-based language