Cognitive Styles

In recent years, researches in applied linguistic field have paid more attention to learners’
learning styles and learning strategies which are important factors that influence the process and
outcomes of learning. “Learning styles refer to an individuals’ characteristics and preferred way
of gathering, interpreting, organizing and thinking about information. It is known that cognitive
styles are an important part of learning styles. Cognitive styles, defined as “a psychological
construct relating to how individuals process information have many classifications. It once was
classified into field-independent style and field-dependent style, analytic style and global style,
reflective style and impulsive style, and tolerance and intolerance of ambiguity. In contrast to
learning styles, learning strategies are “any set of operations, plans or routines used by learners to
facilitate the obtaining, retrieval, storage and use of information”. Presented learning strategies as
direct and indirect strategies depending on whether they directly involve the target language or not
which is a rather popular classification. Obviously, learning style and learning strategies are
different. Learning styles are unconscious learner traits, but learning strategies are specific actions
taken by learners to make learning more efficient.1

The concept of cognitive styles is one that crosses many disciplines. Initially part of the
realm of Jungian/Piagetan psychology, cognitive style research is now an important part of fields
education. To understand cognitive style, a definition of cognition must first be understood.
Cognition is a collection of mental processes that includes awareness, perception, reasoning, and
judgment. There is some debate in defining cognitive style. Goldstein and Blackman define it as
“a hypothetical construct that has been developed to explain the process of mediation between
stimuli and responses. The term cognitive style refers to characteristic ways in which individuals
conceptually organize the environment.” They go on to say that cognitive style is an information
transformation process whereby objective stimuli is interpreted into meaningful schema.
According Sternberg & Grigorenko Cognitive style is an aspect of overall personality and
cognitive processes. Some postulate that cognitive style is a bridge between cognition/intelligence

1
Changju Shi, A Study of the Relationship between Cognitive Styles and Learning Strategies, School of Foreign
Language and Cultures, Nanjing Normal UniversityVol. 1, No. 1; June 2011
measures and personality measures.2 But simply Cognitive style or thinking style is a concept used
in cognitive psychology to describe the way individuals think, perceive and remember information.

Field Independence and Field Sensitivity

According Witkin & Goodenough Field dependence-independence (FDI) is defined as a

cognitive style that refers to individual differences with regard for the preference of internal versus
external cues in the organization of behavior. Confidence placed in internal cues, which is
characteristic of field-independent subject, is associated with a greater restructuring ability; that is,
an increased facility to impose personal organization on information obtained or derived from the
environment. Field-dependent subjects, who are more sensitive to external cues, teud to accept
percepts or symbolic representations as they are given. These tendencies appear to have a different
adaptive value in an educational environment . Field-independent subjects consistently achieve
higher academic level iban field-dependent subjects, whether specific subjects or global
performance are considered. However, a growing body of research which examines second-
language Iearning In relationship to cognitive style suggests that second language learning may be
enhanced by behavioral characteristics associated with both poles of style-dimension on the one
hand, greater restructuring ability of field-independent subjects may favor the Iearning and
application of linguistic rules management of different grammatical system and the successful
execution of common classroom exercises such as Close Tests are more precise, having established
correspondence between the student’s ability to disembed and his/her Iinguistic analysis skills, the
ability to recognize the grammatical functions of words in phrases, and to inter grammatical rules
based on the language input. On the other hand. Brown has suggested that interpersonal skills of
field-dependent subject may demonstrate greater gains in second-Ianguage acquisition when they
have structured contact with native speakers. 3

2
Ridding, R. & Cheema, I. (1991). Cognitive Styles: An Overview and Integration. Educational Psychology, 11(3/4),
193 – 216.

3
Witkin, HA.. Goodenuugh. DR., & Oltman, P.K. (1979). Psychological differentiation Current Status. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 37, t127-t145.
 Ehrman and Leaver have addresed the challenge of investigating FDI as a truly bipolar
cognitive style in different way. They have proposed two separate labels that help unpack the two
poles of the FDI construct as two distinct construct field independent and field sensitivity they
define field independence as the ability to see the trees in the forest as it were and to detect
important information and separate without from its context whereas they reserve the term field
sensitivity to donate the ability to employ a floodlight to maintain awareness of the entire forest
registering the presence of all the flora fauna and moment to moment changes in the environment.
According to Ehrman and leaver the best language learner can learn new material well both in and
out of context and therefore can be expected to score high on field independence as well as on field
sensitivity.