Maria Kozhevnikov, Is There a
Place for Cognitive Style in Contemporary Psychology and Neuroscience? Issues
in Definition and Conceptualization
The second CMBC lunch talk
of the semester featured a presentation by Dr. Maria Kozhevnikov (Radiology,
Harvard School of Medicine; Psychology, National University of Singapore), who
has been a visiting scholar of the CMBC this fall. Dr. Kozhevnikov offered a
critical perspective on the current state of cognitive style research within
different research traditions, such as cognitive neuroscience, education, and
business management. Kozhevnikov opted to treat the lunch talk as an
opportunity for group discussion, which promoted a lively dialogue among the
participants.
Traditional research on
cognitive style began in the early 1950’s and focused on perception and
categorization. During this time, numerous experimental studies attempted to identify
individual differences in visual cognition and their potential relation to personality
differences. The cognitive style concept was thereafter used in the 50’s and
60’s to describe patterns of mental processing which help an individual cope
with his or her environment. According to this understanding, cognitive style referred
to an individual’s ability to adapt to the requirements of the external world,
given his or her basic capacities. Researchers tended to discuss cognitive
style in terms of bipolarity—the idea that there are two value-equal poles of
style dimensions. For example, a host of binary dimensions were proposed in the
literature, such as impulsivity/reflexivity, holist/serialist,
verbalizer/visualizer, and so on. No attempt was made, however, to integrate
these competing style dimensions into a coherent framework. By the late 1970’s,
a standard definition referred to cognitive style as “a psychological dimension
representing individual differences in cognition,” or “an individual’s manner
of cognitive functioning, particularly with respect to acquiring and processing
information” (Ausburn & Ausburn, 1978).
Kozhevnikov questioned the
usefulness of such definitions and pointed to a general lack of clarity with
regard to how the term “cognitive style” was employed in early research.
Moreover, several participants at the lunch talk noted further problems with
the idea of cognitive style. For instance, if the notion of “style” is a
distinct cognitive category, how is it different from basic abilities or
strategies? What does the concept of style add in this respect? While it is
obvious that there exist individual differences in cognition, it was
notoriously difficult to determine exactly how styles differed from
intellectual and personality abilities. On account of these conceptual
difficulties, among others, cognitive style research fell out of favor and virtually
disappeared after the late 1970’s, to the point where even mentioning the term
in psychology and neuroscience settings has become taboo.
The concept of cognitive
style lived on, however, in the field of education, where it quickly became associated
with the idea of learning styles. Kolb
(1974) defined learning styles as “adaptive learning modes,” each of which
offers a patterned way of resolving problems in learning situations. The idea
of individual learning styles in turn gave rise to the so-called “matching
hypothesis”—the suggestion that students learn better when their learning style
is aligned with the style of instruction. Although the hypothesis appeared
reasonable, it has not found empirical support; studies have not been able to
establish that aligning teaching with student styles confers a discernable
benefit. It is worth noting, however, that this observation does not rule out
the existence of learning style altogether. Kozhevnikov asked us to consider
the martial artist Bruce Lee, who when asked what fighting style is best,
responded that the best fighting style is no
style. The point is that it pays to be flexible, that is, to be able to use
different styles—in either fighting or learning—in different situations.
Learning style instruments have become popular in education and tend to use a
combination of different style dimensions that can be quite complex.
The business world has
also adopted the idea of cognitive style, in the form of professional
decision-making styles. In management, researchers have been intensely focused
on the “right brain-left brain” idea, which is frequently invoked in style
categorization. The most popular bipolarity, for example, is that of
analytic/intuitive (thought to correspond to left- and right-brain,
respectively). Kozhevnikov was quick to point out, however, that this theory
has no basis in neuroscience. Lastly, in parallel to education learning style
instruments, business has likewise incorporated its own instruments for identifying
personal styles. The most famous of these is the well-known Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI).
Beginning in the late
1990’s and early 2000’s, recent studies from cross-cultural psychology and
neuroscience have demonstrated that culture-specific experiences may affect
distinct patterns of information processing. Kozhevnikov reported that these
“cultural-sensitive individual differences in cognition” have been identified
at cognitive, neural, and perceptual levels, and appear to be shaped in part by
socio-cultural experiences. Several studies, for example, have explored these
transcultural differences in East Asian and Western populations. Researchers
identified greater tendencies among East Asian individuals to engage in
context-dependent cognitive processes, as well as to favor intuitive
understanding through direct perception rather than an analytic approach
involving abstract principles. Moreover, these individual differences appear
independent of general intelligence. At least one participant expressed initial
reservation about such research, remarking that the talk of the East-West
binary tends to postulate artificial groups (e.g. what exactly is “Eastern culture”?).
Nevertheless, the finding
that cognitive style can be represented by specific patterns of neural
activity—independent of differences in cognitive ability measures—lends support
to the validity of the cognitive style concept. According to this picture,
then, Kozhevnikov redefines cognitive style as “culture-sensitive patterns of
cognitive processing that can operate at different levels of information
processing.”
Assuming this research is
on the right track, the next question becomes: how many cognitive styles are
there? As we have seen, early studies on cognitive style proliferated a large
number of styles and dimensions, which further multiplied with the introduction
of learning and decision-making styles. A unitary structure, such as the
analytical/intuitive binary common in business circles, fails to capture the
complexity of styles. More recent theories have therefore proposed multilevel
hierarchical models, which include both a horizontal (e.g. analytical/holistic)
level and a vertical dimension to reflect different stages of information
processing (e.g. perception, thought, memory). Thus, different stages in
processing reflect different cognitive styles.
Building upon this
important theoretical modeling, Kozhevnikov proposed a model of cognitive style
families with orthogonal dimensions.
According to this proposal, it would be possible to map all the different
proposed styles onto a matrix with 4x4 cells. On the horizontal axis are
different dimensions that include context dependency/independency;
rule-based/intuitive processing; internal/external locus of processing; and
integration/compartmentalization. The cells on the vertical axis correspond to levels
of cognitive processing, such as perception; concept formation; higher-order
cognitive processing; and metacognitive processing. Kozhevnikov suggested that this
theoretical framework offers a means of categorizing and unifying the array of
style types and dimensions—from traditional styles to learning and
decision-making styles—into a single matrix with multiple cells that accentuate
both the relevant horizontal and vertical dimensions.
References
Ausburn, L. J., and Ausburn, F. B. 1978. Cognitive Styles:
Some Information and Implications for Instructional
Design. Educational Communication and Technology 26: 337-54.
Kolb, D. A. 1974. On Management and the Learning Process. In
Organizational Psychology,
ed. D. A. Kolb, I. M. Rubin, and J. M. McInture, 239-52. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.