| This study explored the relationship between field independence and language complexity among gifted fifth and sixth grade children. The subjects included 54 students from a Fairfax County, Virginia, Gifted Childrens's Program, and the instrumentation involved the GEFT (Witkin and Oltman, 1971), T-Unit Analysis (Hunt, 1965), the Language Facility Test (Dailey, 1976), and the Picture Story Language Test (Myklebust, 1973). Data analysis employed Pearson Product Moment Correlations, t-tests, and various ANOVA designs.;Significant language differences occurred between the first and second quartiles of GEFT performance, with the first quartile demonstrating relatively simple language style and the second quartile displaying highly complex language usage. In fact, highly differentiated field independent students, who were the top GEFT quartile, emerged as so strongly nonverbal that they skewed several language scores to weak or inverse relationships with field independence. However, second quartile GEFT performance demonstrated the most complex syntax of the total subjects. Moreover, once the top quartile was removed from whole group correlations, significant correlations occurred between field mode and syntactic complexity indices.;Written language tests indicated no significant links with field mode in respect to productivity or degree of abstraction; however, a significantly higher degree of written grammatical correctness emerged among field independent High Language Facility Test scorers, demonstrating a relationship between syntactic accuracy and field mode. Effective language, as measured by the LFT, appeared in all ranges of differentiation ability. Thus field mode attained a significant relationship with syntactic complexity but not with language facility per se.;A significant relationship occurred between oral language complexity, as measured by T-unit length, and the second, third and fourth GEFT quartiles. Relatively differentiated students demonstrated longer sentences but fewer conjoint structures, thus indicating a relationship between field mode and syntactic complexity. Fluency measures in general correlated inversely with language complexity and productivity. Students using syntactically simpler, more concrete, and less productive language emerged as the smoothest speakers, although language fluency was not related to cognitive style.;Several hypotheses were formulated relating cognitive style and language complexity based on a multi-dimensional construct of language (i.e. syntactic complexity, fluency, productivity, grammatic correctness, and language facility). Additional hypotheses were proposed relating sex differences to both language use and field independence. Though whole group analyses generally supported the latter hypotheses, few hypotheses relating field mode and language complexity were substantiated. However, subsequent between-group analyses of differentiation ability presented a different picture.;Productivity scales demonstrated little relationship to language complexity; rather, language complexity appeared as a result of how words were used rather than how many words were used.;Significant sex differences in language use, but not field mode, emerged. Females used more productive but significantly less complex language than did male students; however, field independence per se emerged as independent of sex. Writing skills of girls were generally more productive and accurate than tose of boys, but also were unrelated to cognitive style. Thus, marked sex differences in language usage were demonstrated but these differences bore no apparent relationship to differentiation ability. |
