From an instructional perspective, it is conceivable that employing an appropriate hypertext architecture should have the advantage of facilitating learning by representing logically the interrelationships between the different pieces of information contained within the hypertext. Furthermore, there would however appear to be a sound theoretical rationale for suggesting that the degree to which hypertext based instructional systems facilitate learning will be contingent on an individual's cognitive style. This study aims to investigate whether different hypertext architectures can be matched to an individual's cognitive style in order to facilitate learning. Three hypertext architectures, linear, hierarchical and relational were employed, and cognitive style was assessed using the Cognitive Styles Analysis (Riding, 1991). The findings reveal that for certain hypertext architectures learning may be facilitated when the architecture is matched to the cognitive style of the user. The results have implications for the design of web based learning systems. (Contains 5 figures and 4 tables.)