How Cognitive Processing Styles Affect Students' Reading Test Scores

Have you ever wondered why students who are good readers cannot pass national and state mandated reading exams? Millions of dollars have been spent to improve instruction, yet thousands of the nation s students have difficulty expressing what they have learned. While most studies concerning the acquisition of reading skills (and knowledge in general) have focused on learning styles and providing instruction to accommodate those styles, far too many students still have difficulty passing standardized tests. Perhaps it is time to look at the next phase, which is how to help students express accurately what they know and what they need to learn. Perhaps it is time to go beyond learning styles and examine cognitive processing styles and their effects on how an individual learns and expresses what he or she knows. This text offers a review of research on cognitive processing styles and the results of original research that examines the effects cognitive processing styles may have on one's performance on different formats of reading tests.