Field Dependence/Independence and the Water Level Task: A Commentary to Pennings' Paper

Abstract

After some methodological comments about the Water Level Task used by Dr. Pennings, a question is raised about the generality of his important results. The argument is put forward that field dependence is a generic style of cognitive functioning cutting across content domains; so specific training in one content domain, even if successful, is unlikely to change subjects' style of functioning in other distant domains. A change in style using cognitive training might not be possible unless training is conducted across content domains to generate some sort of “field-independence learning set.”