Boccia Maddalena, Vecchione Francesca, Piccardi Laura, Guariglia Cecilia
Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of RomeRome, Italy.
Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Fondazione Santa Lucia (IRCCS)Rome, Italy.
Front Pharmacol. 2017 Jul 25;8:496. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2017.00496. eCollection 2017.
Field independence (FI) has been found to correlate with a wide range of cognitive processes requiring cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring, that is going beyond the information given by the setting, is pivotal in creating stable mental representations of the environment, the so-called "cognitive maps," and it affects visuo-spatial abilities underpinning environmental navigation. Here we evaluated whether FI, by fostering cognitive restructuring of environmental cues on the basis of an internal frame of reference, affects the learning and retrieval of a novel environment. Fifty-four participants were submitted to the Embedded Figure Test (EFT) for assessing their Cognitive Style (CS) and to the Perspective Taking/Spatial Orientation Test (PTSOT) and the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale (SBSOD) for assessing their spatial perspective taking and orientation skills. They were also required to learn a path in a novel, real environment (route learning, RL), to recognize landmarks of this path among distracters (landmark recognition, LR), to order them (landmark ordering, LO) and to draw the learned path on a map (map drawing, MD). Retrieval tasks were performed both immediately after learning (immediate-retrieval) and the day after (24 h-retrieval). Performances on EFT significantly correlated with the time needed to learn the path, with MD (both in the immediate- and in the 24 h- retrievals), results on LR (in 24-retrieval) and performances on PTSOT. Interestingly, we found that gender interacted with CS on RL (time of learning) and MD. Females performed significantly worse than males only if they were classified as FD, but did not differ from males if they were classified as FI. These results suggest that CS affects learning and retrieval of navigational environment, especially when a map-like representation is required. We propose that CS may be pivotal in forming the cognitive map of the environment, likely due to the higher ability of FI individuals in restructuring environmental cues in a global and flexible long-term representation of the environment.
研究发现，场独立性（FI）与一系列需要认知重构的认知过程相关。认知重构，即超越情境所提供的信息，对于创建环境的稳定心理表征（即所谓的“认知地图”）至关重要，并且它会影响支撑环境导航的视觉空间能力。在此，我们评估了FI是否通过基于内部参照框架促进对环境线索的认知重构，从而影响对新环境的学习和记忆提取。54名参与者接受了镶嵌图形测验（EFT）以评估他们的认知风格（CS），以及接受了观点采择/空间定向测验（PTSOT）和圣巴巴拉方向感量表（SBSOD）以评估他们的空间观点采择和定向技能。他们还被要求在一个新的真实环境中学习一条路径（路径学习，RL），在干扰物中识别这条路径的地标（地标识别，LR），对它们进行排序（地标排序，LO），并在地图上画出所学路径（地图绘制，MD）。记忆提取任务在学习后立即（即时记忆提取）和第二天（24小时记忆提取）进行。EFT的表现与学习路径所需的时间、MD（即时和24小时记忆提取）、LR的结果（24小时记忆提取）以及PTSOT的表现显著相关。有趣的是，我们发现性别在RL（学习时间）和MD上与CS存在交互作用。仅当女性被归类为场依存型（FD）时，她们的表现显著比男性差，但如果她们被归类为场独立型（FI），则与男性没有差异。这些结果表明，认知风格会影响导航环境的学习和记忆提取，特别是在需要类似地图表征的情况下。我们认为，认知风格可能在形成环境的认知地图中起关键作用，这可能是由于场独立型个体在以全局和灵活的长期环境表征重构环境线索方面具有更高的能力。
