Cognitive Styles and Fluid Intelligence: Are They Related?

Abstract: This study was designed to find out whether there was any significant relationship between cognitive styles and fluid intelligence. To this end, the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) were administered to three hundred fifty five undergraduate and graduate university students as measures of cognitive styles and fluid intelligence, respectively. The students were first divided into two distinct groups, i.e., field dependent (FD) and field independent (FI), on the basis of their scores on the GEFT. The performance of these two groups on the SPM was then analyzed and compared with the GEFT. The T-Test analysis showed that the FI students' scores on the SPM were significantly higher than those of the FD. The findings are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.