How Verbalizers and Visualizers Process the Newspaper Environment

This article addresses the question of how people process news photographs and news stories as a function of their scores on 2 scales designed to measure 2 “cognitive styles” called visualizing and verbalizing. Although newspaper practitioners believe news photos enhance the newspaper reading process, research has not demonstrated a clearly positive impact. Education theory about visualizing and verbalizing suggests these 2 individual-specific indicators may explain why news photos sometimes help and sometimes hinder. The results show that high visualizing scores did not enhance recall of stories or photos or even enhance story interest. In contrast, high verbalizers found all stories more interesting and recalled both stories and photos better than low verbalizers. The results are discussed in terms of cognitive style theory and its role in how people process visual and verbal news information.

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