Gender Differences in Verbalizing-Visualizing and Wholistic-Analytic Cognitive Styles

The present research investigated the gender differences in verbalizing-visualizing and wholistic-analytic cognitive styles of university students in Pakistan. The sample comprised of 427 university students (male students = 160, female students = 267) with age ranging from 18 to 40 years. Verbal-Imagery Cognitive Style Analysis Test and Extended Cognitive Style Analysis-Wholistic-Analytic developed by Peterson (2005) were used. Styles were designated through verbal-imagery ratios and wholistic-analytic ratios calculated on median response times. Crosstab proportions test indicated that male students (53.1%) were more visualizer as compared to female students (32.6%), while, female students (18.4%) were more verbalizer as compared to their counterparts (8.8%). In addition, it was found that male students perform faster on visual tasks as compared to female students. Analysis of variance suggested that on mean verbal task, verbalizer were better than imager and little styles, while on mean imagery reaction time, visualizer style was better as compared to verbalizer and little styles.