The third in a series concerning some implications of learners' cognitive style for the development of reading competence, this paper reports on a study that was concerned with the effectiveness and efficiency with which ninth grade field dependent and field independent readers processed prose in silent reading at three difficulty levels. Results…

Although numerous studies have indicated that older persons process visual information more slowly than younger persons, the precise nature of age-associated changes in the processing of visually presented information remains unclear. Older adults (N=18) and college students (N=18) performed a visual search task in which lists of words and…

Depression therapy literature cites the importance of self-concept in formulating therapeutic strategies. Traditional depression measures catalog a client's symptoms, but fail to tap the structure of dysfunctional thoughts and judgments that form the client's self-concept. Vector-product multidimensional scaling was used to develop a measure of…

Students ask "why?" questions in the survey stage of using TICCIT lessons either because (1) they have holistic learning strategies, (2) they are searching for familiar bases upon which to attach new material, or (3) they desire to find out what relevance the lesson has for their future lives. In the design phase of TICCIT, an effort was…

The Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS) was developed to measure pervasive negative attitudes of a depressed person towards self, outside world, and future. The DAS follows Beck's construct of cognitive dysfunction. Two studies investigated the psychometric properties of the DAS and the relationship between cognition and affect in 300 normal…

Cognitive development and various educational implications are discussed in terms of Donald Saari's model of the interaction of a learner and the enviroment and the constraints imposed by the inefficiency of the learner's cognitive system. Saari proposed a hierarchical system of cognitive structures such that the relationships between structures…

A study of 130 undergraduate students enrolled in a course on auiovisual techniques sought to determine whether heuristic or algorithmic computer-based problem solving training would be differentially effective for students varying in cognitive complexity as measured by the Educational Set Scale (ESS). The interaction was investigated between one…

This paper discusses a study to determine how people view political power within the Swedish system. The objective was to investigate variations in the way people perceive a common social phenomenon. The sample was composed of 15 subjects chosen randomly from the adult population of Goteborg, Sweden. Subjects were interviewed regarding their…

A causal-comparative study was conducted among 56 educationally disadvantaged children to determine if children who had the benefit of a home-based experience were significantly different from their peers in intellectual ability, self-concept, and cognitive style. Using the cognitive-developmental method of instruction, trained para-professionals…

Noting that one means of better understanding the nature of cultural differences is to elucidate the cognitive differences between members of differing cultures, this paper examines Alexander Luria's sociohistorical theory of functional cognitive systems. The paper first describes Luria's notion of functional systems, the crux of which postulates…

In an extension of a pilot study (Mezoff, 1980B) the influence of participant cognitive style on various human relations training (HRT) outcomes was explored. Cognitive style dimensions investigated were field-dependence-independence (FD-FI, Witkin 1978) and interpersonal discrimination (Carr 1979). University students (N=39) enrolled in a group…

A study was conducted on the relationships between information seeking and individual cognitive structures (both individual cognitive complexity and the constructs used to understand others). Specifically, the study sought to determine how people use questions to reduce the uncertainty of meeting new people in impression-formation interviews. The…

This presentation attempts to illustrate that mathematics in the elementary grades is not and should not be "culture free." As a prescriptive course, the discussion gives suggestions on how to improve the mathematics experience of elementary school children by using the culture of both the teacher and the learner in mathematics instruction.…

Two experiments were implemented in which hyperactive children were exposed to models of their own age level. It was hypothesized that modeling treatments designed to demonstrate reflective problem-solving strategies would improve the problem-solving ability of both normal and hyperactive children, and that, concomicantly, children's ability to…

The use of holistic cognitive style in black language is discussed in this paper. Two types of cognitive style, analytic and holistic, are identified. Holistic thinkers are described as socially oriented while analytical thinkers are characterized as task oriented. Evidence is given to support the claim that blacks tend to be holistic thinkers and…