The Effects Of Illustration Types And Presentation Mode On The Cognitive Load Of Junior Middle School Students With Different Cognitive Styles

Reading is an important cognitive activity in our daily life,study and work. It is an important problem to study how to read more materials and extract information quickly in a short time, which always gains people's concern. Illustrations are usually used to enhance people's ability on reading comprehension. In recent decades, there have been more and more studies about the illustrations in reading comprehension. At present, researches on illustration effect in the field of domestic psychology are mainly focused on Chinese, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, etc, on which a certain amount of research have been publicly reported. However, there are few studies on illustration effect and cognitive load in English reading. This study discusses the effect that the different types of illustration and text-illustration presentation mode on the cognitive load and learning effect of junior middle school students in English reading with different cognitive style .This study designed two experiments which use the junior middle school students as the participants. In experimentⅠ, we employed a between-group design, i.e.4 (factor1: illustration types,①interpretative illustration;②descriptive illustration;③d ecorative illustration;④n o illustration)×2(factor2: cognitive style,①field dependence;②field independence) with the purpose of discussing the effect that the illustration types on the participants'cognitive load and learning effect with different cognitive style. In experimentⅡ, we employed a between-group design, i.e.4 (factor1: presentation mode,①text-illustration separated simultaneously;②t ext-illustration integrated simultaneously;③text follows illustration;④illustration follows text)×2(factor2: cognitive style,①field dependence;②field independence) with the purpose of discussing the effect that the text-illustration presentation mode on the participants'cognitive load and learning effect with different cognitive style. The research obtains following results:1. The cognitive load of participants who use the interpretative illustration in reading is the lowest whose reading score is the highest in which there are marked difference compared with the other three teams.2. In the presentation mode of text-illustration integrated simultaneously, the cognitive load of field independent participants is higher than that in text-illustration separated presentation mode markedly while the difference between the field dependent participants is not marked.3. The participants'cognitive load in the presentation mode of text-illustration integrated simultaneously is lower than that in the presentation mode of text-illustration integrated successively while the reading scores are higher than that in the mode of text-illustration integrated successively markedly.4. The cognitive load of the field dependent participants is lower than that of the field independent participants markedly in the reading process while the reading scores are higher than that of the field independent participants markedly.