A study on the relationship between students’ cognitive style and Mathematical word and procedural problem solving while controlling for students’ intelligent quotient and math anxiety

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is to investigate whether field dependency could predict students? mathematical problem solving in word and procedural mathematical problems and to explore whether this association remains significant when students? Mathematics anxiety and intelligent quotient (IQ) is controlled. So, we used data of 100 samples of guidance school girls and inferential statistical analysis (ANOVA and ANCOVA) for investigating the hypothesis of the study. Obtained results indicated that there were significant differences in students? mathematical performance in word and procedural problems by the groups of field dependency. Moreover, this difference is still significant when IQ and Mathematics anxiety as covariate variables were considered. However, the amount of omega square for ANCOVA analysis decreased when covariate variables inserted to the model. Findings of this study are suitable for researchers in field of psychology of learning Mathematics and who interested in how cognitive style affect students? performance in particular Mathematics.