The tilt of the frame or room provided a field and the degree of independence from it was shown by the accuracy with which the subject had the experimenter adjust the rod or chair.
Their interpretation and the concept of field dependence/independence was initially presented by Witkin and his group in his book Personality Through Perception.
Witkin's group participated in developing their concepts and were given coauthor credit in their two books.
More independently, Witkin wrote a Journal of Abnormal Psychology review of relationships between field dependency/psychological differentiation and types of psychopathology.
In it, greater psychological differentiation was shown by more sophisticated detail, demonstrating more specific identity.
It seems reasonable to suppose that average ("normal") subjects can confuse the results of a study that includes them without recognizing their particular contribution.
If the test is given with insufficient dark adaptation, many subjects will see the luminous stimulus disappear or fragment when they fixate it visually and a large proportion of them will not happen to report that.
[3] The underlying cognitive style theory is that field-independent people can better ignore the influence of the background image and find the hidden figure, while field-dependent people will find it harder to ignore the irrelevant field and will be slower to locate the figure.
Researchers since Witkin's group have extended the use of this measure to other concepts, including components of memory and logic.
[4] These measures may also be sensitive to traits of Autism Spectrum Disorder, where individuals with ASD are quicker to solve EFT tasks.