Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2018 Aug 28;13(8):e0203115. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203115. eCollection 2018.
Cognitive style is thought to be a stable marker of one's way to approach mental operations. While of wide interest over the last decades, its operationalization remains a challenge. The literature indicates that cognitive styles assessed via i) questionnaires are predicted by personality and ii) performance tests (e.g., Group Embedded Figures Test; GEFT) are related to general intelligence. In the first study, we tested the psychometric relationship between the Cognitive Style Index questionnaire (CSI) and personality inventories (NEO Five Factor Inventory; NEO-FFI, HEXACO Personality Inventory Revised; HEXACO-PI-R). In the second study, we assessed the CSI, NEO-FFI, GEFT and a general intelligence test (Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices Test; RSMT). We found that CSI scores were largely predicted by personality and that CSI was uncorrelated with GEFT performance. Instead, better performance on the GEFT was associated with better performance on the RSMT. We conclude that i) cognitive style questionnaires overlap with personality inventories, ii) cognitive style performance tests do not measure cognitive styles and should not be used as such and iii) the cognitive style concept needs to be assessed with alternative measurement types. We discuss possible future directions.
认知风格被认为是人们进行心理运算的一种稳定的方式。尽管在过去几十年里受到了广泛关注，但它的操作化仍然是一个挑战。文献表明，通过以下方式评估的认知风格：i）问卷，受个性预测；ii）表现测试（例如，团体镶嵌图形测试；GEFT）与一般智力有关。在第一项研究中，我们测试了认知风格指数问卷（CSI）与人格量表（大五人格量表；NEO-FFI，人格六边形修订版；HEXACO-PI-R）之间的心理计量关系。在第二项研究中，我们评估了 CSI、NEO-FFI、GEFT 和一般智力测试（瑞文标准渐进矩阵测试；RSMT）。我们发现，CSI 分数主要受个性预测，CSI 与 GEFT 表现无关。相反，GEFT 表现越好，RSMT 表现越好。我们得出结论：i）认知风格问卷与人格量表重叠，ii）认知风格表现测试不能衡量认知风格，不应作为此类测试使用，iii）需要使用替代测量类型来评估认知风格概念。我们讨论了可能的未来方向。
