Psychophysiological indices of cognitive style : a triangulated study incorporating neuroimaging, eye-tracking, psychometric and behavioral measures

Bendall, RCA; Lambert, S; Galpin, AJ; Marrow, LP; Cassidy, SF

Abstract

Employing a triangulated design to explore psychophysiological indices of cognitive style, the study investigated the validity of the intuition-analysis dimension of cognitive style and its associated construct measure, the Cognitive Style Index (CSI). Participants completed a comparative visual search (CVS) task whilst changes in hemodynamic concentrations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were monitored using functional near-infrared spectroscopy and eye movements were recorded together with task performance measures of response time and accuracy. Results revealed significant style-related differences in response time and number of saccades. Analysts were characterized by fewer saccadic eye movements and quicker response times - but with comparable accuracy scores - compared to intuitives, suggesting a more efficient visual search strategy and decision-making style on the experimental task. No style-related differences in neural activation were found, suggesting that differences were not mediated by style-specific variations in brain activation or hemispheric lateralization. Task-evoked neural activation - compared with baseline resting state - represented the value of PFC-based neural activation measures in studies of cognitive processing. Findings demonstrated style-related differences supporting the intuition-analysis dimension of cognitive style and the validity of the CSI as a psychometric measure of style. The potential value of valid psychometric measures of cognitive style in applied areas is highlighted.

Key words: cognitive style, information processing, Cognitive Style Index, functional near-infrared 21 spectroscopy, eye-tracking, neuroimaging, Bayesian statistics

Citation

Bendall, R., Lambert, S., Galpin, A., Marrow, L., & Cassidy, S. (2019). Psychophysiological indices of cognitive style : a triangulated study incorporating neuroimaging, eye-tracking, psychometric and behavioral measures. Personality and Individual Differences, 144, 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.02.034

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 21, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 4, 2019
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Mar 21, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 26, 2019
• Journal: Personality and Individual Differences
• Print ISSN: 0191-8869
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Volume: 144
• Pages: 68-78
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.02.034
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.02.034
• Related Public URLs: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/personality-and-individual-differences