How Learners with Different Cognitive Styles Read Learning Materials with Text and Pictures: A Gaze Analysis

This paper describes the pilot study that attempts to analyze the difference in learners' behavior of reading multimedia learning materials by our program. Learners with different cognitive styles characterized as verbalizers and visualizers were assigned to read the materials about cooking science with their eye movement recorded, and analyzed. An alternative strategy of visualization to integrate the instructional message with the temporal and spatial data in a single diagram is attempted and testified in this pilot study. As the result, it is observed that the gaze of the verbalizers mainly moves back and forth among the paragraph areas constituted mainly by text of each page whereas the visualizers frequently check pictures referenced by some text, yet figure legends are more read by verbalizers. Preliminary findings from the pilot study provide data presentation and interpretation in better granularity, and support that learners' cognitive styles affect their decisions of orders, emphasis, and repetition to read text and pictures.