Students cognitive styles and the need of visual control in animation

Animation and visual presentation in multimedia provide the flexibility to exploit scientific knowledge and students' cognitive: styles. The focus of this study is to report the use of two different visual control treatments (self-controlled vs. system-imposed) among students with different cognitive styles (Field Independent and Field Dependent). Eighth-grade students were tested to determine how they learned from different design approaches of instructional materials. The 2 (cognitive style) x 2 (treatment) ANCOVA, controlling for a covariate, prior physics scores, indicates a main significant effect with respect to visual control (p < 0.0005), but an insignificant effect with respect to cognitive style (p > 0.05). The effect of visual control treatment is significant among FI students (p < 0.05) but not FD students (p > 0.05).