Mental Imagery, Learning Styles, and Text Comprehension

Contains fulltext : 19558.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)The present dissertation offers a theoretical integration of the orientation to studying tradition (e.g. Entwistle, 1988, Ramsden, 1988) and theories of reading cognition (Kintsch, 1994, Sadoski & Paivio, 2001) and describes two studies based on this integrative conceptualization of the determinants of text understanding. One study of 78 Hungarian elementary/middle school students explored choice of learning approach, reported mental images while reading, and perceived connections between understanding and picturing texts and examined relationships between reported surface learning and ASI (Approaches to Studying Inventory, Entwistle & Kozéki, 1985). Students reported using different approaches in different situations and consciously choosing surface learning to get better grades and avoid punishment, even though they knew its disadvantages. No relationship was found between reported use of surface learning and scores on the ASI. Reports of forming mental images of different texts varied across students and texts. The idea of a relationship between text concreteness and text understanding was supported. An experiment examined the effects of (high, medium, and low) text imagery evokingness or concreteness, learning styles (ASI), and grades on text comprehension, as measured by SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome, Biggs & Collis, 1982) in a group of 273 Hungarian 6th graders. It found weak support for the hypothesis that text concreteness and learning style affect understanding. The discussion suggests that not only text concreteness, but also other text and student factors, such as the context and structure of the text and prior knowledge, determine text understanding. Grades explained more of the difference in understanding than did text concreteness or learning approach. Creating texts with different levels of concreteness was found to be much more complicated than earlier research suggests. The dissertation raises serious question about the validity and reliability of the ASI as a measure of learning styles.RU Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 20 december 2004Promotores : Simons, P.R.J., Mönks, F.J. Co-promotor : Michels, C.G.J.221 p