Abstract
Does cognitive style have influence functions? In this study, we build on the existing literature (e.g., McKone et al., 2010; Hakim et al., 2016) in providing answers to the question. We anticipated that the type of attitude tendency (i.e., holistic or analytic, Nisbett et al., 2001) is somehow related to the perceptual processing ability applied in the Navon task (Navon, 1977). By pre-screening for holistic and analytic thinkers from 289 participants, we adapted a global-local task. We manipulated the density of local targets to explore a more detailed discrepancy between the local-global perceptual systems of people with different cognitive styles. We found that holistic thinkers responded faster (at the same level of accuracy) on both global and local tasks. These data were interpreted to suggest that holistic thinkers might better handle divided-attention tasks than analytic thinkers.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. None of the experiments was preregistered.
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This study was supported by Open Research Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning to Xuemin Zhang, the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31271083) to Xuemin Zhang, by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61632014) to Bin Hu and Xuemin Zhang, and by China Scholarship Council.
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Lee, L.Y., Talhelm, T., Zhang, X. et al. Holistic thinkers process divided-attention tasks faster: from the global/local perspective. Curr Psychol 42, 5415–5427 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01879-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01879-1