The assessment of verbal‐imagery learning styles and their effect on the recall of concrete and abstract prose passages by 11‐year‐old children

Forty 10‐11‐year‐old children received a test of verbal and imaginal representation of information during learning from prose material. A verbal‐imagery code ratio of the speed of response on test items that could be answered quickly from verbal associations to those that could be promptly answered from images was found for each subject. On the basis of this ratio, subjects were divided into five groups with equal numbers of children in each. All subjects then listened to four prose passages with a questioned recall test after each. The prose passages ranged from being highly acoustically and semantically complex in content to visually descriptive. It was hypothesized that there would be an interaction between verbal‐imagery code ratio level and passage type in their effect on recall. A significant interaction was found (P < 0.01). As the verbal‐imager ratio increased (i.e. there was a change from high verbal/low imaginal to low verbal/high imaginal performance) recall on the highly semantic passage decreased, while that on the highly visual passage increased. The results were discussed in terms of a possible verbal‐imagery learning style continuum.