Cognitive Style as a Process Coordinating Outer Space with Inner Self: Lessons from the Past

In the 1950s a revolution was sparked in studies of cognition that became known as the "New Look" (Bruner & Klein, 1960) and continues today (e.g., Dember, 1974; Gardner, 1985). What was it that was new? Investigators abandoned the search for universal laws that explained perceptual activity as a self-contained entity and set out to correlate individual differences in cognitive functioning with personality. Herman Witkin (1949, 1954) was a key member of the group that pioneered the revolution.