The Eye-movements Study On University Students With Different Cognitive Styles In The Figure Reasoning Problem

Figure reasoning is an important cognitive style, it is not only affected by cognition, but also affected by personality. Field cognition mode is an important variance of individual difference, and it is one of important dimensions of personality structure too. It is an important personality variable which affects the figure reasoning level. Are there differences between field dependent and field independent students during figure reasoning? Are there differences of the strategies solving problem between them? In order to review the effect of the cognitive style and the difficulty of figure reasoning on each index of eye movements, we carry on the eye movement experiment by Eyelink II.Through embedded-figure-test way, 18 field dependent and 18 field independent students are chosen from the university students. Experimental design is two mixed experimental design including one factors repeated. That is 2 (field–dependence/independence)×2 (difficulty of tasks) .The first factors is called the between-subjects design, the second factors is called the within-subjects design. The experimental materials are chosen from RSPM - CR.The experiment indicated that: There is significant difference on total score in the figure reasoning among subjects of the different cognitive style groups. Field independent students have the most advantages over field dependent students. With the reasoning question difficulty gradually rising, the effect of cognition style also increases. Although there are no significant difference was found between field dependent and independent students on the indexes of eye movement, such as duration ,fixation counts and so on .But the results of interest areas (IA)show that there is significant difference on the dwell time and fixation counts, the subjects of field independence have longer dwell time and more fixation counts than field dependence in IA one ,and have faster reaction time and fewer fixation counts than field dependence in IA two .Field independent students had significant advantages over field dependent students on the strategies solving problem.