Features of Categorization in the Field of Subject Perception of Adult Active Internet Users

Abstract

The article is devoted to categorization as one of the leading mechanisms of cognitive activity. Theoretical positions in the understanding of categorization are considered, the appeal to the methodology of the psychoproach in its empirical study is substantiated. A hypothesis about the complication of the categorical structure of consciousness of adult users of digital technologies due to specific characteristics of the Internet is expressed. The results of the study of the cognitive complexity of consciousness in the field of subjectbeen empirically proven that they have no cognitive advantages as compared with adults who continue to use the printed word as the preferred information coding system (on a sample of 500 people over 35 years old who are knowledge workers). An explanation is offered to the recorded absence of differences in categorization through the commonality among respondents of the cultural-historical nature of the knowledge categories of the objective world and through the features of the media image as the leading coding unit of Internet information.

Keywords

• categorization
• cognitive complexity
• sign system
• printed word
• media image
• semantic differential
• factor analysis.