Study analyzes how visual, verbal learners acquire knowledge

Some people are visual learners, while others learn better through words - and when learning new information, a recent Penn study says, individuals tend to play to these strengths.

Led by David Kraemer, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience in late March.

The study was also presented at the 16th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in the same month.

According to Kraemer, one theme of the Cognitive Neuroscience Center is to examine the different ways people access semantic knowledge.

"For example, some people prefer mental pictures to words," said Kraemer. "We wanted to find any difference in brain activation that correlates with the way people save information differently."

According to the study, tendencies toward visual or verbal learning styles affect how children acquire knowledge. But there hasn't been direct evidence linking the styles to specific neural systems.

Kraemer's team started the study in the fall of 2007, when they started gathering preliminary data and validating the test materials.

Eighteen subjects were chosen for the study. To identify each individual's cognitive abilities, the subjects answered a survey called "Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire."

After they completed the survey, they performed basic tasks during a functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, session.

For each task, participants saw either a picture or a word for a moment, then saw either two pictures or two words.

While the two objects were shown, participants were asked to press a button to indicate which object was more similar to the first picture or word.

After the trials were done, the team looked at the fMRI images to find which brain regions were more activated.

The study concluded that visual learners "recruit regions of visual cortex when processing written descriptions of visual features, proportionate to their self-reported inclination toward the visual cognitive style."

The study also says that verbal learners "recruit regions of phonologically responsive cortex when presented with easily nameable pictorial representations."

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Still, the study suggests that further research is necessary to find the relationship between an individual's cognitive style and ability.

"What is still unanswered by the present research is whether major components of cognitive style are determined by factors that are linked to, or independent of, one's cognitive abilities," the study says.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.