C.P.C, : Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive aropean Bulletin of Cognitive Psychol 19 Vo tn" 3, 8618 AN APPROACH TO FAMILY ANTECEDENTS OF FIELD DEPENDENT-INDEPENDENT COGNITIVE STYLE BASED ON LAUTREY'S MODEL Maria Fernanda Péramo, Agustin Dosil, and Carolina Tinajero Departamento de Psicologta Evolutiva y de la Educacién University of Santiago de Compostela, Campus Universitario 15702 Santiago de Compostela, La Corufia, Spain Abstract. Herman Witkin's theory of psychological differentiation predicts that family environments allowing children to organize and structure their own experiences should foster a field-independent cognitive style. This prediction is pariially confirmed by the results of a study on the relationship between field dependence/independence (as measured by the Embedded Figures Test) and Family Environment Structure (Lautrey, 1980) in 91 children aged 12-94. A ‘one-way ANOVA and the Scheffé test showed significant cognitive style differences between groups of children from different family types: children from ‘flexible or weak family environments were more field independent than children ‘from rigid families. Key words: Cognitive style, family environment structure, field dependence- independence, differentiation theory. Mots clés : Dépendance-indépendance du champ, style cognitif, structuration de environnement familial, modéle de la différenciation.606 ‘Marta Fernanda Péramo, Agustin Dosil, & Carolina Tinajero Cognitive styles are consistent modes of functioning exhibited by individu- als in their perceptive and intellectual activities. They are called cognitive styles because they describe the form of the activity and not its content. Dudek and Marchand (1983) illustrated this aspect in the following way: "Style implies a way of perceiving an attitude toward the world that shapes and configures raw experience to reflect a single vision, a way of being" (p. 139). The cognitive style receiving the most attention in the literature is Field Dependence-Independence (FDI). This construct was initially represented by three experimental situations (Tilting Room - Tilting Chair Test: TRTCT; Rotat- ing Room Test: RRT; Rod and Frame Test: RFT) in studies on the perception of verticality, which were aimed at dissociating the visual and postural (vestibular/somesthetic) reference systems. The covariations observed between the perception of verticality and other perspective tests (such as the Embedded Figure Test: EFT), in which the subject has to restructure a stimulus field by breaking down the organization imposed on it, led to a definition of FDI as a measure of the capacity to overcome misleading or embedding contexts, Witkin and his co-workers (Witkin, Lewis, Hertzman, Machover, Meissner, & ‘Wapner, 1954) believed that in both tests, the solution, although quite different @ priori, was one and the same: perceiving a field element independently of its context. The context inhibits the perception of this element in the one case (EFT) and modifies it in the other (RFT). So far, there have been many studies on this cognitive style, most of which can be placed in the context of the Theory of Differentiation (Witkin, Dyk, Faterson, Goodenough, & Karp, 1962). Some have explored the relationship between FDI and child-rearing patterns. In one of the first of such studies, Seder found that the mothers of field-dependent children were stricter, more authoritarian, and more prone to limit assertive and aggressive behavior by their children than were those of field-independent children (unpublished results men- tioned by Witkin, Dyk, Faterson, Goodenough, & Karp, 1962). Stemming from this preliminary study, other studies appeared concerning family antecedents of cognitive style. Most of them (a) analyzed different features of the family environment in an isolated way, (b) frequently started from different conceptual approaches, and (c) lacked a well-defined theoretical framework. Moreover, the effects of the family's normative structure on field dependence-independence have received very little attention. In our view, proper assessment of the rela- tionship between FDI and family background requires that the choice of family variables be made within a well-defined theoretical framework that, as far as possible, takes into account the child's cognitive processes. In the work reported here, our starting point was the framework proposed by Lautrey (1978), who built upon the ideas of Piaget to construct his theory of the influence of "family environment structure" (FES) on cognitive develop-Field dependence/independence 607 ment. According to Piaget, the development of individual schemes requires the presence of both perturbations and regularities in the child's interaction with objects. Taking Piaget's idea of equilibration as central to the explanation of cognitive development, Lautrey states that perfecting the equilibration forms requires perturbations that force the subject to resolve currently imperfect states. As Lautrey remarks in his analysis of Piagetian theory, an environment will be more favorable to cognitive development if it generates perturbations and at the ‘same time provides sufficient order to allow for readjustments. On the basis of the presence or absence of perturbations and regularities, four types of environ- ments can be defined: one having perturbations and regularities, another having mostly regularities and few perturbations, a third in which there are no regular- ities and perturbations are the norm, and finally, one having no regularities or perturbations. For the first three of these environments Lautrey used the terms “flexible”, "rigid", and "weak", respectively, while the last possibility can be disregarded owing to its impracticality in the real world. Originally developed to explain the interaction between the individual and the world of objects, some Piagetian concepts were adapted by Lautrey (Lautrey, 1980, p. 67) to explain the individual's interaction with the family environment, in which regularity is provided by family rules and habits (the "elemental organizers of family environment"), and perturbation is supplied by deviation from, or absence of, such rules and habits (Lautrey, 1978). Thus family environment structures, like material environments, can be broadly clas- ied as flexible, rigid, or weak. The combination of regularity and perturbation in a flexible family structure allows the child to discover both the rules of fam- ily life and also how those rules can be modified to suit particular circum- stances. Rigid family structures impose regularity on family life regardless of circumstances, so that the child generally always knows what to do or expect without needing to consider what the particular circumstances are, Lastly, the weak family structure, in which perturbation is the norm and regularity is uncommon, provides a barely structured or random environment in which the individual cannot discover the rules that control everyday relations between events, since there are no norms or habits regulating his activities. Upon putting his hypotheses to the test, Lautrey found that FES was indeed related to cognitive development: children from flexible families performed better and were more advanced as regards operational thought than were children from rigid or weak families (for a comprehensive description of this study see Lautrey, 1980). In addition to offering a theoretical frame of reference, the forms of family environment structure Lautrey describes can be related to child-rearing patterns frequently associated with the FDI cognitive style. Though the generality of the FES types and the lack of previous studies hinder comparison, analyses by other