Exploring the Impact of Cognitive Style and Perceived Difficulty on 2D and 3D Sketching

Sketching is a foundational skill in interior design education, yet students’ performance varies with cognitive style and perceived task difficulty. This study examined how these factors influence improvement in 2D and 3D sketching following a targeted workshop designed to develop spatial visualization and representational skills. Fifty-three undergraduate interior design students in the United States and South Korea completed pre- and post-workshop sketching tasks requiring the visualization of room shape, furniture proportion, and details in floor plans and perspectives. Learning outcomes were analyzed to assess task-specific performance gains and the role of individual differences. Path analysis using ordinary least squares regression examined the relationships among cognitive style, perceived difficulty, and sketching performance. Adaptive learners showed the greatest improvement in 2D tasks, whereas intuitive learners excelled in 3D representations. Perceived difficulty significantly predicted performance, particularly for 2D sketches, and analytic tendencies were associated with higher percieved difficulty for 3D tasks. The workshop effectively supported foundational sketching skills while highlighting areas that require additional scaffolding for complex tasks. These findings underscore the importance of task-specific, sequenced, and differentiated instruction that accounts for cognitive style and perceived difficulty. Future research should adopt longitudinal designs to explore how perceived difficulty influences self-efficacy and design performance over time and to identify instructional strategies that optimize sketching development across 2D and 3D tasks.