Cognitive Styles and Reinforcement as Predictors of Attention-based Cognitive Performance

This study is an attempt to relate the concept of Field Dependence-Independence (FD-I)with performance of an individual on Attention-based tasks emphasizing the role of reinforcement. These cognitive styles are recurrent styles of perceiving the self and the environment analytically or globally, judging the relatedness between them and their role in the enumerable information processing tasks an individual takes up at cognitive level. The field dependent-independent people tend to differ on various aspects of cognition and personality. Mainly the emphasis is how they tend to differ in attending to different stimuli with cues, their responses to those stimuli and the role of the reinforcement which tend to come from the field around or within an individual. This relates as to how individuals attend to everyday situations cognitively and their unique ways of adjustment specifically in events of stress or anxiety. The sample of 40 students in the age range 18–25 years were tested individually upon Embedded figures test-short form (Witkin, Jackson 1956) and Stroop color and word test (Golden and Freshwater, 2002) under various conditions of reinforcement in laboratory settings. Results obtained after the correlational and regression analysis are hence discussed in light of empirical evidences available.