Dataset Information

The Impact of Cognitive Style Diversity on Implicit Learning in Teams.

ABSTRACT: Organizations are increasingly looking for ways to reap the benefits of cognitive diversity for problem solving. A major unanswered question concerns the implications of cognitive diversity for longer-term outcomes such as team learning, with its broader effects on organizational learning and productivity. We study how cognitive style diversity in teams-or diversity in the way that team members encode, organize and process information-indirectly influences team learning through collective intelligence, or the general ability of a team to work together across a wide array of tasks. Synthesizing several perspectives, we predict and find that cognitive style diversity has a curvilinear-inverted U-shaped-relationship with collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is further positively related to the rate at which teams learn, and is a mechanism guiding the indirect relationship between cognitive style diversity and team learning. We test the predictions in 98 teams using ten rounds of the minimum-effort tacit coordination game. Overall, this research advances our understanding of the implications of cognitive diversity for organizations and why some teams demonstrate high levels of team learning in dynamic situations while others do not.

SUBMITTER: Aggarwal I

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6374291 | biostudies-other | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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The Impact of Cognitive Style Diversity on Implicit Learning in Teams.

Aggarwal Ishani I Woolley Anita Williams AW Chabris Christopher F CF Malone Thomas W TW

Frontiers in psychology 20190207

Organizations are increasingly looking for ways to reap the benefits of cognitive diversity for problem solving. A major unanswered question concerns the implications of cognitive diversity for longer-term outcomes such as team learning, with its broader effects on organizational learning and productivity. We study how cognitive style diversity in teams-or diversity in the way that team members encode, organize and process information-indirectly influences team learning through collective intell ...[more]

PMID: 30792672

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Project description:Field independence (FI) has been found to correlate with a wide range of cognitive processes requiring cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring, that is going beyond the information given by the setting, is pivotal in creating stable mental representations of the environment, the so-called "cognitive maps," and it affects visuo-spatial abilities underpinning environmental navigation. Here we evaluated whether FI, by fostering cognitive restructuring of environmental cues on the basis of an internal frame of reference, affects the learning and retrieval of a novel environment. Fifty-four participants were submitted to the Embedded Figure Test (EFT) for assessing their Cognitive Style (CS) and to the Perspective Taking/Spatial Orientation Test (PTSOT) and the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale (SBSOD) for assessing their spatial perspective taking and orientation skills. They were also required to learn a path in a novel, real environment (route learning, RL), to recognize landmarks of this path among distracters (landmark recognition, LR), to order them (landmark ordering, LO) and to draw the learned path on a map (map drawing, MD). Retrieval tasks were performed both immediately after learning (immediate-retrieval) and the day after (24 h-retrieval). Performances on EFT significantly correlated with the time needed to learn the path, with MD (both in the immediate- and in the 24 h- retrievals), results on LR (in 24-retrieval) and performances on PTSOT. Interestingly, we found that gender interacted with CS on RL (time of learning) and MD. Females performed significantly worse than males only if they were classified as FD, but did not differ from males if they were classified as FI. These results suggest that CS affects learning and retrieval of navigational environment, especially when a map-like representation is required. We propose that CS may be pivotal in forming the cognitive map of the environment, likely due to the higher ability of FI individuals in restructuring environmental cues in a global and flexible long-term representation of the environment.

Project description:Aphantasia-a condition wherein individuals have a reduced or absent construction of voluntary visual imagery-is diagnosed using either the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) or self-identification. However, a significant discrepancy exists between the proportions of aphantasia in the populations assessed using these two criteria. It is unclear why the reported proportions differ excessively and what percentage of people cannot form visual imagery. We investigated the replicability of the proportion of people with aphantasia using both criteria in the same population of participants. Therefore, we explored the potential causes of the discrepancy and characteristics of putative aphantasia in terms of multisensory imagery, cognitive style, and face recognition ability. First, we conducted an online sampling study (Study 1: N = 2,871) using the VVIQ, self-identification of a reduction in visual imagery, Questionnaire upon Mental Imagery (QMI), and Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire (VVQ). We found that 3.7 and 12.1% fulfilled the VVIQ and self-identification criteria, respectively, roughly replicating the proportions reported in previous studies. The self-identification criterion-but not the VVIQ criterion-contains items related to face recognition; hence, we suspected that face recognition ability was factor contributing to this discrepancy and conducted another online sampling study (Study 2: N = 774). We found a significant correlation between VVIQ and face recognition ability in the control group with self-identification, but not in the group defined by low VVIQ (VVIQ ≤32). As the participants in the control group with self-identification tended to exhibit moderately high VVIQ scores but low face recognition ability, we reason that the discrepancy can be partially explained by the contamination of individual differences in face recognition ability. Additional analyses of Study 1 revealed that the aphantasia group included participants who lacked all types of sensory imagery or only visual imagery in multisensory imagery and exhibited a non-specific cognitive style. This study indicates that the VVIQ alone may be insufficient to diagnose individuals who report an inability to form visual imagery. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of multiple assessments-along with the VVIQ-to better understand the diversity of imagery in aphantasia.

Dataset Information

The Impact of Cognitive Style Diversity on Implicit Learning in Teams.

Publications

The Impact of Cognitive Style Diversity on Implicit Learning in Teams.

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