The Effect of Personal and Impersonal Rewards on the Learning Performance of Field Independent-Dependent Mexican-American Children.

The effect of cognitive style and learning conditions on the rote verbal learning performance of Mexican American subjects classified as field independent or field dependent was investigated. Field dependent referred to a strong perceptual influence caused by the context or background while field independent referred to an ability to overcome the influence of a surrounding perceptual field. The sample consisted of 44 Mexican American children, 9 1/2 to 12 years, enrolled in a Southern California public school. The Portable Rod and Frame Test classified subjects as field independent or dependent. The learning component consisted of 3 stages: (1) the response learning stage, which reflected when the subject recalled the response as a unit, (2) the associative one stage, which reflected the first correct association between stimulus and response, and (3) the associative two stage, which indicated actual mastery of the correct association. The subjects were tested in a distraction free room within the school by Mexican American experimenters. One half of the subjects from each group were randomly assigned to one of 2 learning conditions: personalized and impersonalized rewards. Results demonstrated that Mexican American children, regardless of cognitive style, required fewer trials when personal rewards were employed. The present study failed to reflect field independence/dependence as a major dimension of individual differences. (NQ)