Event-related potentials in adolescents with different cognitive styles: field dependence and field independence

Abstract

Field dependence/independence (FD/FI) is an important dimension of personality and cognitive styles. Different ability in mobilizing and/or allocating mental-attentional capacity was considered to be the most possible explanation for the FDI cognitive style. Many studies on characterizing the functional neuroanatomy of attentional control indicated the existence of a dissociable sub-process of conflict-monitoring and "cognitive control" system. However, little was known about it. We might dissociate "cognitive control" system from conflict processing by taking advantage of the variable of the FDI cognitive style. In addition, essentially cognitive styles (FDI) are often widely studied in psychological and educational fields, but hardly in neuroscience. We speculated that ERP components could help to explain the difference between how FD and FI individuals process information. The purpose of the reported study was to explore the possible relation between the "cognitive control" system and the conflict processing system during stimulus-matching task. We first characterized the standard FD/FI of senior-high-school Han students in grade two in Beijing, China, based on 160 students with similar age, education, living and cultural background. Twenty-six adolescents were selected and divided into two groups (extreme FD group and extreme FI group) according to their Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) results (FD: 5-8; FI: 17-19). They were tested on both Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and stimulus-matching task. ERP was measured while the subjects performed the stimulus-matching tasks by categorizing two figures that were presented sequentially either as a match (same shape) or as a conflict (different shape) conditions. The results showed that the mean amplitude of N270 in FI group was higher relative to that in FD group at nearly all centrofrontal areas in the conflict condition. We conclude that the FDI cognitive styles could influence the conflict processing by the "cognitive control" system due to the different abilities of FD and FI subjects in mobilizing and/or allocating attentional resources, which can be indexed by N270.

Cognitive style modulates conscious but not unconscious thought: Comparing the deliberation-without-attention effect in analytics and wholists

“…Ample evidence has associated the analytics (FIs) with the ability to selectively attend to a given piece of information in the presence of distracting elements to a greater extent than wholists (FDs; Avolio, Alexander, Barrett, & Sterns, 1981;Bialystok, 1992;Burton, Moore, & Holmes, 1995;Guisande, Paramo, Tinajero, & Almeida, 2007;Jia, Zhang, & Li, 2014;Zelniker, 1989;Zhang & Noyes, 2008). Accordingly, some researchers (Meng et al, 2012) have suggested that FDs and FIs may be essentially different in how they mobilize or allocate attentional resources. FDs are inclined to process information in a superficial or automated way whereas FIs tend to engage in deeper processing (Meng et al, 2012).…”

“…Accordingly, some researchers (Meng et al, 2012) have suggested that FDs and FIs may be essentially different in how they mobilize or allocate attentional resources. FDs are inclined to process information in a superficial or automated way whereas FIs tend to engage in deeper processing (Meng et al, 2012). This, combined with evidence that FDs generally have the same mental-attentional capacity as their same-aged FI peers (e.g., Guisande et al, 2007;Pascual-Leone, 1987), may explain why analytics in the present study were unable to generate an integrated decision in conscious thought, unlike wholists.…”

Influence of education level on design-induced N170 and P300 components of event related potentials in the human brain

“…Three of the most studied attributes of the N170 include manipulations of face inversion (Itier & Taylor, 2004), facial race (Jacques et al, 2007;Vizioli et al, 2010) and emotional expression (Righart & de Gelder, 2008). Field dependence/independence (FD/FI) cognitive styles have been studied by using matching and non-matching shapes, which were indexed by N170 (Meng et al, 2012). Goode and his colleagues used working-memory and attentional inhibition (WM/I) tasks to determine whether these di®erent cognitive styles (FD and FI) were re°ected by di®erences in ERP activity (Goode et al, 2002), they found that the P300 amplitudes were higher in the FD group in a high-memory load condition and indicated that FD subjects must change their usually global percept.…”

Assessing Field Dependence–Independence Cognitive Abilities Through EEG-Based Bistable Perception Processing

“…The frontopolar positivity that occurs between 280 and 400 ms after stimulus onset could be regarded as the P300 ERP component, which is related to attention and it is maximal over the central-parietal region (Polich, 2007). Meng et al (2012) studied the relation of the ERP components and the FDI cognitive styles through a different experimental scheme. More specifically, participants in their experiment performed a stimulus matching task by categorizing two sequentially presented figures as a match (same shape) or as a conflict (different shape).…”