Cognitive style and creativity: The role of education in shaping cognitive style profiles and creativity of adolescents

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious research on cognitive styles (CSs) has often overlooked their complexity and the effect of the environment on their development. While research supports visual abilities as predictors of domain‐specific creativity, there is a lack of studies on the predictive power of CS in relation to creativity beyond abilities.AimsThe current study aimed to explore the validity of the CS construct as environmentally sensitive individual differences in cognition. We examined the internal structure of the CS construct, its predictive power in creativity beyond visual abilities, and how CSs of Singaporean secondary school students are shaped with age under specific sociocultural influences (Singapore's emphasis on STEM disciplines).SampleData were collected from 347 students aged 13–16 from a secondary school in Singapore.MethodsStudents were administered nine tasks assessing their visual abilities and learning preferences, artistic and scientific creativity, and questionnaires assessing their CS profiles.ResultsThe confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for a matrix‐type CS structure consisting of four orthogonal CS dimensions and third levels of information processing. Structural equation models demonstrated significant contributions of context independence and intuitive processing to artistic and scientific creativity, respectively, beyond visual abilities. The results also suggested that Singapore's education system could be contributing to significantly shaping adolescents' CS profiles.ConclusionsOur findings support the validity of CS as individual differences in cognition that develop to cope with environmental demands. They highlight the importance of providing an appropriate environment in shaping adolescents' CS profiles to support the development of domain‐specific creativity according to their strengths and talent.

Cognitive versatility and adaptation to fluid participation in hospital emergency department teams

“…Across a variety of studies examining within-person or intrapersonal diversity, research demonstrates that individuals who are more intrapersonally diverse facilitate collaboration and performance within diverse teams (e.g., Bunderson and Sutcliffe, 2002 ; Mok and Morris, 2010 ; Lu et al, 2022 ) even when they do not share specific diversity traits in common with other members ( Jang, 2017 ). This seems to occur, in part, because they themselves are more flexible and creative, as extant research has demonstrated that cognitive versatility is associated with creativity ( Meneely and Portillo, 2005 ; c.f., Ho and Kozhevnikov, 2023 ) as well as efficiency in problem solving due to an ability to adapt one’s strategies to a given situation (for review, see Kozhevnikov, 2007 ). In addition, recent research demonstrates that the presence of cognitively versatile individuals enhances social integration in teams, leading teams to experience less task and process conflict, and better team performance ( Aggarwal et al, 2023 ).…”