Individual differences in virtual environments: concept of cognitive style

Abstract

AbstractThere is a renewed interest in the differences of individuals due to the advances in virtual environments, especially through far-reaching technologies. In particular, we highlight the notion of the role of individuals' abilities to recognize and use this structure to perform various information-intensive tasks. It has been found that the concept of cognitive styles is very applicable to such researches. The paper presents the classification of cognitive styles. The major findings of the Palquist and Kim study (2000) are outlined. They examine the effects of cognitive styles - a field dependent and a field independent cognitive style, and on-line database experience on a Web search. An interesting find is that the on-line search experience can greatly reduce the effect of field dependence on the Web search performance. Ford's article (2000) draws attention to the connection between field dependence and cognitive styles in terms of individual behavioral patterns in navigation of the hypermedia systems. Virtual environments provide a wider framework for integrating and directly manipulating global and analytic aspects of a given body of information, and it seems to map well onto the requirements suggested by research on cognitive styles. However, more further research is required before we can develop adaptive virtual environments capable of offering realistic improvements in the effectiveness of information processing activities.