The effect of cognitive style,age, gender and structure on the recall of prose passages

Two-hundred 10–15 yr old students from a school in the UK for children from a Yemeni background were assessed for cognitive style by means of the Cognitive Styles Analysis. Based on their scores, students were placed on two dimensions: Wholist–Analytic and Verbal– Imagery. Half of the sample read three prose passages with a 20-question recall test after each. The other half received the same passages augmented with additional structuring features, (a) format structure as paragraph headings (Passage 2), and (b) conceptual structure as a summary inserted either after or before the main passage (Passages 1 and 3, respectively). The results suggested that pupils improved most with age on the content that suited their style, female Wholists and male Analytics benefitted most from the addition of structure, and, finally, with age the Verbalizers gained more with a summary added after the main passage and the Imagers with it inserted before. The results are discussed in terms of style effects on developmental trends in strategy development and gender differences in information processing.