Abstract
Differences in cognitive style between rural and urban children in the Republic of Korea were compared. A total of 271 boys and girls randomly sampled from the fourth to eighth grade in an urban center and a rural town were administered an embedded figures test and a test of conceptual styles. The urban children showed higher field-independence scores and higher analytic conceptualization. A hypothesis formulated by Witkin et al. (1974) suggests the rural-urban differences in field-independence may be attributable to differential importance attached by parents to social conformity. Differences in conceptual style may be similarly explained. The two cognitive variables were moderately correlated for this sample.
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