Abstract

This paper is concerned with the effect that the visual-auditory dimension of cognitive style has on the performance of multimedia systems. In a series of experiments the performance of users of multimedia systems were not fully explained by their classification of cognitive style that was calculated by a purely visual test. Therefore an extension to the visual classification was proposed that reflected the way individuals' perceive information that is presented using audio. This paper first reviews the definition of cognitive style and the auditory dimension. Then the performance of subjects in the original series of experiments are analysed to assess whether the new definition of cognitive style more accurately explains their behaviour.