Arab Educational Information Network

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between cognitive style, the three abilities (or kinds of giftedness) driven from the Sternberg's Triarchic Abilities Test (STAT), and Raven's Standard Progressive Matrix (RSPM). The construct validity of the STAT was also examined. The sample comprised 400 16-year-old gifted secondary school students. The students were given the Arabic version of Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA), STAT and RSPM. The factor analysis showed that the STAT measures the three abilities, which it is supposed to measure. Yet, the factor analysis of the STAT left much of the variance in performance unexplained (54.7%), meaning that the test is not yet perfect. The result showed that the correlations between the two dimensions of cognitive style and analytic, creative, practical abilities as well as the total score of STAT were roughly zero. Moreover, the correlation between RSPM and the style dimensions was also very low. These low coefficients suggest that the styles measured by CSA are originally independent of intelligence as measured by STAT and RSPM. There was also a significant interaction between VI style and the type of ability. The Bimodal were superior in creative and practical ability, while the Verbalizers were superior in analytical ability. Bimodal style is more related to creativity than the other styles are. This result may suggest that the creative persons have a cognitive flexibility to move from one mental process to another. They are neither Verbalizers nor Imagers but rather they can flexibly operate using either style when the situation calls for it. However, this result requires further investigation to clarify this relationship.(Published abstract)