Relationships among gender, cognitive style, academic major, and performance on the Piaget water-level task.
Many researchers have found that more college-age adults than would be expected fail Piaget's water-level task, with women failing more frequently than men. It has been hypothesized that differences in cognitive style may account for performance differences on the water-level task. In the present study, 27 male and 27 female architectural students and 27 male and 27 female liberal-arts students were assessed for their performance on both Piaget's Water-level Task and Witkin's Group Embedded Figures Test. No difference was found in performance of male and female architectural students on either task, but male liberal-arts students scored significantly higher than female liberal-arts students on both measures. A disembedding cognitive style predicted success on the water-level task for the architectural students but not for the liberal arts students.
Hammer
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City College of New York, City University of New York, USA.
Hoffer
N
N
King
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WL
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D002321:Career Choice; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D013028:Space Perception