Written Communication Oct 1985

Coherence and Cognitive Style

JAMES D. WILLIAMS

Abstract

The primary hypothesis was that field independent subjects would produce discourse that would be judged more coherent than the discourse of field dependent subjects. A total of 44 subjects in their first term of college composition were selected from a group of 60 volunteers from two universities and a community college. Each subject was administered the Culture Fair Intelligence Test, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, and the Group Embedded Figures Test. There were five research conditions: Three evoked oral responses, and one evoked a written response. A group of readers unaware of the nature of the research evaluated each response holistically, rating it in terms of a coherence scale. Coherence scores were then analyzed in relation to cognitive style classification. The primary hypothesis was supported by the data. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated significant cognitive style effect, F(6,25) = 4.82, p <.0001. The correlation between cognitive style and coherence was significant, r(32) = .54, p <.002. The results suggest that cognitive style is a significant variable in explaining differences between good writers and poor ones.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1985-10-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088385002004008
Topics
two-year college multilingual writers voice and style

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. WILLIAMS (1993)
    Rule-Governed Approaches to Language and Composition
    Written Communication
  2. WILLIAMS (1987)
    Covert Linguistic Behavior During Writing Tasks
    Written Communication

Cites in this index (5)

  1. Phelps (1985)
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    College English
  2. Bamberg (1984)
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    Research in the Teaching of English
  3. Tierney et al. (1983)
    Cohesion and Textual Coherence
    Research in the Teaching of English
  4. Williams et al. (1983)
    Motivation in the Composition Class
    Research in the Teaching of English
  5. Flower et al. (1981)
    The Pregnant Pause: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Planning
    Research in the Teaching of English
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CrossRef global citation count: 10 View in citation network →

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