A Comparative Study of Visual, Aural, and Physical Learning Styles

This essay delves into three distinct learning styles: visual, aural, and physical (kinesthetic). It begins by defining the visual learning style, emphasizing the ability to perceive and understand visual information, and highlights the preference for written materials, diagrams, and visual media, while also mentioning potential challenges with auditory learning. The essay then explains the aural learning style, focusing on learning through listening and speaking, and its connection to auditory sounds, lectures, and discussions, including its musical component. Finally, it explores the physical learning style, also known as kinesthetic learning, which emphasizes learning through hand and body movement, tactile experiences, and manipulation of objects. The essay references Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and provides relevant activities and career paths for each learning style, along with references to support the discussion.

Running head: DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
Visual learning style:
There are eight types of learning styles mentioned in the Howard Gardner’s Theory of
Multiple Intelligences and visual spatial learning style is one of them. This learning style refers
to the ability of a person in terms of perceiving, analyzing and understanding visual information
available in the world that surrounds them. People who learn with this style of learning style tend
to think visually and are very good at perceiving the “big picture” however sometimes they tend
to ignore the details (Owens et al., 2016). Psychologist Linda Kreger Silverman was the first
person to coin this term; the learners of visual- spatial category learn best when they are taught
through written methods, or any modeled and diagrammed instruction and also through the help
of visual media.
When it comes to learning from auditory- sequential learning like lectures, or recitation,
drill and repetition, these learners tend to perform poorly. This is why people who prefer Visual
learning tend to be poor in handwriting and spellings but they do have a mind for the puzzles,
maps, mazes and more. Learners who have strong visual learning style enjoy some specific
activities in schools like art and craft, geometry, drafting, computer-assisted designs and
computer graphics (Aisami, 2015). Their strong sense of visual spatial intelligence may help the
students to do well in careers like photography, artistry, video related works, construction and
more such. Hence to help such learner to move ahead with their education, pictures, tablet
games, graphics and videos might be an effective way since the traditional educational settings
might not be of much help.

2DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
Aural learning style:
Auditory Learning style or Aural learning style is also one of the eight types of learning
styles present in Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Learners who tend to learn
things by listening to them are known as aural learners. Aural learning style is a method in which
people learn best with the help of hearing and speaking answers. Learners who prefer aural
learning are proficient in acting and speaking and typically this learning style takes place through
imparting lectures and recitation in the class (Varvarigou & Green, 2015). Aural learning style
makes a learner easily remember the songs or any other auditory sounds. This kind of learning
style follows an input and output pathway; the input pathway describes all information that one
takes in as an individual. It is an attempt that every aural learner must do by engaging
himself/herself in lectures or any other tutorials and then discuss it with their instructors or even
classmates and friends. However, in order to finish the process of aural learning, there must be
an output that is produced through this learning style; this output indicates the performance of
the learners or how much they learned during that stage of input (Lense & Dykens, 2013).
Musical learning style is also a part of the auditory or aural learning style and it refers to the
ability of the learner to be able to understand and process rhythm, sound and patterns in sound
and other such auditory information. Such learners tend to enjoy schools activities like choir or
orchestra and have the hand to write poems or songs.
Physical Learning style:
Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences also mentions another type of
learning style known as the Physical or the kinesthetic learning style (Metzler, 2017). This kind
of learning style refers to the learner’s ability to process any kind of information that is given

3DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
through hand and body movement and also done through control and expression. This kind of
learning style prefers to utilize bodily information over any other form of imparting information.
This learning style uses the act of movement in order to serve as a medium to help the learner
store it in their memory and remember the movement of the others and their own. This learning
style thus might take the help of touching and manipulating of objects whilst teaching the
students. Learners who prefer the physical learning style tend to enjoy work of creativity that
they have to do with their own hands and their own physical movement. Since these types of
learners possess a lot of energy to learn things through physical movements, they might turn to
be good athletes (Thomas, Nelson & Silverman, 2015). It is important to utilize the fine motor
movement that the physical learner posses and when these learners are given the permission to
utilize their tactile senses, they tend to learn best. This kind of learning style helps the learner to
remember the educational material longer. These learners utilize to a great deal through the act of
writing and interacting with a computer or keyboard is of more value for them rather than
reading materials.

4DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
References:
Aisami, R. S. (2015). Learning styles and visual literacy for learning and performance. Procedia-
Social and Behavioral Sciences, 176, 538-545.
Lense, M., & Dykens, E. (2013). Musical learning in children and adults with Williams
syndrome. Journal of intellectual disability research, 57(9), 850-860.
Metzler, M. (2017). Instructional models in physical education. Routledge.
Owens, A., Wu, J., McDermott, J. H., Freeman, W. T., & Torralba, A. (2016, October). Ambient
sound provides supervision for visual learning. In European conference on computer
vision (pp. 801-816). Springer, Cham.
Thomas, J. R., Nelson, J. K., & Silverman, S. J. (2015). Research methods in physical activity.
Human kinetics.
Varvarigou, M., & Green, L. (2015). Musical ‘learning styles’ and ‘learning strategies’ in the
instrumental lesson: The Ear Playing Project (EPP). Psychology of Music, 43(5), 705-
722.