In teacher education, case-based learning is an efficient method to foster pre-service teachers’ diagnostic competence. To adaptively utilize text-based cases, knowledge about the effect of text characteristics is needed, but still scarce. The present study focuses on the effects of two text characteristics – text style and text subject – and on the effect of empathy on the accuracy of case-based cognitive models. This was examined with an experimental design, in which 391 pre-service teachers read a case in either psycho-narrative or externally focalized style (text style) about test anxiety or dyscalculia (text subject). Afterwards, state-empathy was measured by self-report and cognitive models were assessed with a recognition and verification test. Regression analyses showed no main effects of text characteristics, but moderation effects for text style and affective state-empathy. Implications are drawn for adaptively designing text-based cases and for possible mechanisms of how empathy is involved in diagnostic judgement formation.