Cognitive styles on media and technology usage and attitude

• Published in: Türk Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi Vol. 6; no. 2; pp. 439 - 448
• Main Authors: Dinç,Dilem, Aslan,Hürol
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mehmet Şahin 2021
• Subjects: Din Bilimleri; Edebiyat; Eğitim Bilimleri; Felsefe & Psikoloji & Sosyoloji; Tarih; Türk Dili; Antalya; Türkiye; CSA; media and technology usage; analytic cognitive style; verbal cognitive style; analitik bilişsel stil; görsel bilişsel stil; Medya ve teknoloji kullanımı; visual cognitive style; holistic cognitive style; holistik bilişsel stil; sözel bilişsel stil
• ISSN: 2602-2923

People began to spend more time with devices as technology developed. The
increasingly widespread use of technology in daily life has triggered new studies on
this subject. Evaluated as a personal attribute, cognitive style affects individual
behavior in all aspects of life. Nowadays, in parallel to the increased use of media
and technology, it has become of interest how this personal attribute affects the use
of media and technology. Actually, the ways people use technology indicate or
affected by their cognitive styles. This study aims at determining the relationships
between the cognitive styles of university students and the manners they use
technology and media. The student participants were selected from social science
departments (total of 94 students from the departments of psychology, sociology,
and philosophy) and the Computer Technology and Information Systems (CTIS)
department (total of 74 students). Of the 171 participants, 94 were female and 77
were male and their ages ranged from 19 to 27 (mean = 21.08; sd = 1.35). The
participants were given a parallel form of the Cognitive Style Analysis (CSA) test
on a computer and then were asked to complete the media and technology usage and
manners scale. According to the results of analyses, social science students were
found to be leaning towards verbal cognitive style, whereas the CTIS students
tended to the visual cognitive style. In addition, the participants with the analytic
cognitive style preference were found to have more social network friends than
those who leaned towards the holistic cognitive style. Overall findings indicate that
analytic cognitive style is associated with tendency to socialize in using media and
technology, whereas the holistic cognitive style is associated with individualistic
tendencies.