As we saw above, a person's cognitive style refers to the way in which they habitually process information. It helps determine the cognitive-psychological aspects of the student's learning style and this in turn helps determine the learning strategies chosen by the student. Cognitive styles have been found to be highly stable traits, a fact that led Brooks et al (1985: 230) to claim that: 'differences in cognitive style are potentially as important as differences in abilities to the formulation of a reasonable model of strategic information processing'.

In this section, we look at one of the most influential cognitive style dimensions (field dependence/independence). We then look at another dimension, namely the holistic/analytic cognitive style, which appears to be more balanced.