The Inhibition Of Individuals With Different Cognitive Styles In The Comprehension Of Sentences Including Ambiguity And External Irrelevant Information

In the process of the cognition, the inhibition is defined as the mechanism of preventing the irrelevant information from entering the working memory or eliminating the irrelevant information from the working memory. The function of the inhibition is to checking the activation, eliminating and limiting. With the development of related studies in inhibition, more attention had been paid to the special groups. At present, researchers studying individual differences in inhibition mainly focused on different groups with different ages, different comprehension capacities and different working memory capacities, and they show different inhibition efficiencies. Many studies showed that cognitive styles (field-dependence/ independence) were associated with the cognitive reconstitution, the working memory capacity and the spatial selective attention. Hence, the purpose here was to study the inhibition differences between FD and FI individuals in the comprehension of the sentence with ambiguity and external irrelevant information.In this study, three experiments were conducted by using moving windows tasks: Experiment 1 studied differences between FD and FI individuals as they inhibited ambiguous words by setting different sentence kinds and time intervals, which adopted 2 (cognitive style: FD, FI)×2 (sentence kinds: ambiguous sentences , unambiguous sentences)×2 (ISI: 150ms, 800ms) mixed factorial design. Cognitive styles and ISI were between-subject variables and sentence kinds was within-subject variable. Experiment 2 studied differences between FD and FI individuals as they inhibited temporary syntax ambiguity by setting different sentence kinds, which adopted 2 (cognitive style: FD, FI)×2 (sentence kinds: ambiguous sentences, unambiguous sentences). Cognitive style was between-subject variable and the sentence type was within-subject variable. Experiment 3 studied differences between FD and FI individuals as they inhibited external irrelevant information by setting different probe words and interferential materials. It adopted 2 (cognitive style: FD, FI)×2 (interferential materials: meaning, unmeaning)×2 (probe kinds: interference probe words, control probe words) mixed factorial design. Cognitive style was between-subject variable and interferential materials and probe kinds were within-subject variables.The results indicated: (1) Individuals with different cognitive styles were significantly different in inhibiting ambiguous words and temporary syntax ambiguity. The inhibition capacity of FI individuals was better than that of FD individuals. (2) Individuals with different cognitive styles were significantly different in inhibiting the external irrelevant information. The inhibition capacity of FI individuals was better than that of FD individuals. (3) The process of the inhibition of ambiguous words was that a few of the meanings of the ambiguous words were activated firstly and then unsuitable meanings were inhibited. (4) Meanings of interferential materials affected the inhibition. In contrast to unmeaning materials, meaning materials were more difficult to inhibit.