Effects of individuals' learning-style strengths on reading recall and attitudes with and without pictures

This investigator analyzed the effects of learning-style strengths on recall and attitudes when reading text with or without pictures. The participants were drawn from the population of fourth-grade students attending a K--5 public school in Queens, New York. Permission to conduct this study was obtained from the New York City Department of Education, parents, and the participants.; The Learning Style Inventory (LSI) was administered to each participant. Price Systems developed individual and group profiles from the LSI results. Students silently read chapters in the novel, Holes by Louis Sachar. They were divided into two-treatment groups. The first read the five chapters of the novel including pictures placed over words, whereas the other group read the same chapters without pictures. This process was alternated every five chapters for each group. Teacher-made reading-recall chapter tests were administered after each set of five chapters was read. The above procedures were repeated until the book had been read in its entirety. Each participant completed a Semantic Differential Scale (SDS) (Pizzo, 1981) attitudinal survey after the novel was completed.; Statistical analyses revealed a highly significant difference on recall-test scores when reading with, rather than without pictures t (63) = 5.092 p<.001. The mean recall scores for reading with pictures was 86, whereas the mean recall scores for reading without pictures was 77. A correlation analysis indicated that subjects who were authority-oriented scored significantly lower reading recall-test scores when reading with pictures (p<.05). Visually-preferenced students scored significantly higher on reading recall tests when reading with pictures than without ( p<.05). Subjects with a late morning time-of-day preference scored significantly higher on reading recall tests when reading without pictures (p<.05). Those students who preferred mobility performed significantly less well on recall tests when reading without pictures than with pictures (p<.01).; No significant correlations existed between learning-style preferences and attitudes on the task. A correlation also was performed to determine if there was a relationship between reading recall-test performance and the liking of reading with or without pictures. Results were no significant correlation between liking the pictures or not and recall test scores.