Fild-Dependence, Cognitive Ability, and Academic Achievement in Anglo American and Mexican American Students

Abstract

This study examined the relatedness of field-dependence to tasks of cognitive ability and academic achievement. Sixty Anglo American and 60 Mexican American 4th-grade students, whose primary home language was English, served as subjects. Students completed a series of associative-memory and reasoning ability tasks. Field-dependence evidenced a strong relationship with a nonverbal test of reasoning ability as well as with measures of reading and math achievement. Ethnic differences in the field-dependence construct were not found, although ethnic differences in academic achievement were evidenced. Achievement differences between Anglo and Mexican American students became nonsignificant, however, when parental level of education was controlled statistically. Finally, the best predictor of academic achievement was found to be a three-variable combination, which consisted of a field-dependence task, a nonverbal test of reasoning ability, and the student's parental level of education. Results of this study support the hypothesis that field-dependence is better considered as a measure of reasoning ability than of cognitive style although it remains of substantial importance as a nonbiased predictor of school achievement for majority and minority students.