11 field-dependent and 14 field-independent students rated the relative grammaticality of sentences three times, with sentences presented repeatedly during the first and second judgments. All the subjects received negative reinforcement after the second judgments. Analyses showed that field-independent subjects tended to adopt a more stringent criterion on judgments after than before repetition, whereas no change in criterion was found for field-dependent subjects. Negative reinforcement showed only a tendency to lead field-dependent subjects toward greater change to a more lenient criterion than field-independent subjects. Change in judgments of grammaticality are reliably associated with the cognitive style of subjects, field dependence or field independence.
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