Global and local perceptual style, field-independence, and central coherence: An attempt at concept validation

Abstract

Historically, the concepts of field-independence, closure flexibility, and weak central coherence have been used to denote a locally, rather globally, dominated perceptual style. To date, there has been little attempt to clarify the relationship between these constructs, or to examine the convergent validity of the various tasks purported to measure them. To address this, we administered 14 tasks that have been used to study visual perceptual styles to a group of 90 neuro-typical adults. The data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis. We found evidence for the existence of a narrowly defined weak central coherence (field-independence) factor that received loadings from only a few of the tasks used to operationalise this concept. This factor can most aptly be described as representing the ability to dis-embed a simple stimulus from a more complex array. The results suggest that future studies of perceptual styles should include tasks whose theoretical validity is empirically verified, as such validity cannot be established merely on the basis of a priori task analysis. Moreover, the use of multiple indices is required to capture the latent dimensions of perceptual styles reliably.

Keywords: central coherence; closure flexibility; factor analysis; field-independence; global/local perception; perceptual style; visual perception.

Figure 1.

Examples of the stimuli used in the pen and paper tasks. ¹ Ekstrom, French, Harman, & Derman (1976) Kit of Factor-Refrenced Cognitive Test (KIT) materials are reprinted by permission of Educational Testing Service, the copyright owner. However, the test questions and any other testing information is provided in their entirety by American Psychological Association. No endorsement of this publication by Educational Testing Service should be inferred. ² Adapted from Shorr, Delis, & Massman (1992), from “Memory for the Rey-Osterrieth Figure: Perceptual Clustering, Encoding, and Storage”, Neuropsychology, 6, 43-50. ³ Reprinted from the Visual and Object Spatial Perception Battery, with permission from Harcourt Assessment. ⁴ Reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, MIND GARDEN, Inc. (www.mindgarden.com) from the GROUP EMBEDDED FIGURES TEST by Herman A. Witkin, Philip K. Oltman, Evelyn Raskin, & Stephen A. Karp. Copyright 1971, 2002 by Herman A.  Witkin et al.. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent.

Figure 2.

Examples of the stimuli used in the computer tasks. ¹ Reproduced with permission from The British Journal of Developmental Psychology © The British Psychological Society.