The effect of cognitive style and cognitive skills on school subject performance

TWO hundred and Jive 14-16 year olds from two Anglophone Canadian schools (99 females and 106 males) were given the Canadian Test of Cognitive Skills (an intelligence-type test) and the Cognitive Styles Analysis and their grade 9 scores in the subjects of French, English, mathematics, geography and science were obtained. The study first looked at the relationship between cognitive skills and cognitive style. The correlation between cognitive skills and cognitive style approached zero suggesting their independence. Having confirmed the independence of cognitive skills and cognitive style, their interactive effect, including gender, on subject performance was investigated by means of analysis of variance. There teas a significant interaction between sex and subject; females were superior to males in all five subjects, but particularly so in French and English. There was also a significant interaction between skill, style and subject in their effect on performance. This was discussed in terms of the role of style in learning and the effect of skill/intelligence on strategy development.