A Developmental Study Of The Relationship Between Locus Of Control And Cognitive Processing

Author : Elizabeth Shepard
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 158 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (133 download)

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Download or read book The Relationship Between Cognitive Styles and Cognitive Developmental Styles written by Elizabeth Shepard and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This investigation is aimed at assessing any possible interaction between three cognitive styles; impulsivity/ reflectivity, field independence/field dependence, and in ternal/external locus of control, and Jean Piaget's cognitive status. Cognitive styles refer to the consistent way in which people organize and process all experiences and information, and which determine their modes of problem-solving, thinking, remembering, and perceiving the world around them. Locus of control is therefore, defined as the degree to which individuals perceive rewards and punishments as stemming from their own actions or whether conseauences are controlled by external forcers or significant others. According to Lefcort (1976), who organized the results of scores of investigations, internals achieve more in school, resist the influence of others, and are more able to defer gratification than their external counterparts, and Roberts (1971) found positive correlations between reading achieve- ment and mathematic achievement in those individuals who are internally controlled, Impulsivity/reflectivity refers to the manner in which individuals respond to alternative hynotheses. Impulsive in-dividuals tend to offer the first answer that comes to them, while reflective individuals tend to ponder the various al ternatives before choosing an answer. Kagan, 1965b, Kagan, Pearson, and Welch, 1966a, found reflective children to score better on tasks involving visual discrimination, serial recall, inductive reasoning, and reading in the primary grades, than impulsive children, Tyler (1978) reports that reflective children do better on tests of intelligence and school work, than do impulsives (based on a study by Meichenbaum and Goodman, 1969). Attempts to modify conceptual tempo have been met with some success. These strategies include forced delays, reinforcing longer latencies, modeling and teaching reflective scanning strategies. Field independence/field dependence refers to the extent that individuals are able to differentiate figures as discrete from their backgrounds and differentiate objects from embedded figures. Field independent people also perceive an upright position with reference to axis in the prevailing visual field. Field dependent persons, on the other hand, experience and perceive cognitive situations in a global and undifferentiated fashion. Of considerable interest is the characteristics of those who are field independent and field dependent. Field independent individuals, according to Tyler (1974), tend to be more aware of inner experiences, more active in dealing with their environments, and are more in control of their own impulses, and are not as "people" oriented in their career choices, etc. Field dependent persons, on the other hand, tend to accept their environment rather passively, lack a clear self-identity, and tend to go along with what others think and do. According to Goodman (1976), field independent persons also analyze and search for revelant cues, while field dependent persons adopt a "spectator" role, looking passively at the stimuli presented. Piaget's developmental theory deals with every aspect of an individual's perception of the world, but the aspect of his theory, which is dealt with in this study, is his description of the cognitive development of individuals. Cognition refers to all mental activity, perception, memory and thought, through which knowledge of one's world is attained. During the state of concrete operations, the child ac-quires the ability to conceive, classify, seriate and to deal with numbers. The concrete child is able to identify revelant variables, contradictions, but cannot think theoretically about that which cannot be directly observed. Likewise, the formal operational child is able to formulate theoretical laws, and they possess adult-like reasoning skills. The majority of literature relating cognitive styles and cognitive developmental status has made comparisons at the formal operational level, and were very contradictory in their findings. What was found, was significant differences in problem-solving tasks, permutation tasks, and cognitive tasks in favor of those individuals who are field independent and reflective. Piaget's theory has helped teachers more fully understand the individual differences in the attainment of concepts of their students. The subjects of the present study were children whose mental ages ranged from 7.0 to 12.11. They were given the Children's Embedded Figures Test (or a measure of field in- dependence/field dependence, the Matching Familiar Figures Test for impulsivity versus reflectivity, the Nowichi-Strickland Scale of Internal versus External Control), and various Piagetian cognitive tasks for a measure of cognitive status. Statistical analysis of the data resulted in support of the null-hypothesis; the lack of positive significant corre-lations between [scores] on the Matching Familiar Figures Test (impulsivity versus reflectivity), and the Nowichi-Strickland Scale of Internal versus External Control, and cognitive developmental status, but supported, the hypothesis for the children's scores on the Embedded Figures Test as compared to scores of the cognitive developmental tasks. That meant, that children who obtained high scores on the Piagetian tasks, proved to be more field independent than those obtaining lesser scores. More research is needed in the area of cognitive style versus cognitive status to enable parents and educators to more fully understand the individual learning process and to enhance the attainment of skills"--Document.