COGNITIVE STYLES OF STUDENTS, STUDYING DOUBLE SPECIALTIES WITH DIFFERENT SUCCESS LEVEL

Abstract

The article analyses the problem of psychological determination of the successful double specialty education in higher institution. The question of peculiarities of cognitive styles affecting mastering of subjects of a certain specialty and two specialties simultaneously is posed. On the basis of the analysis of the history of cognitive style studies two approaches to understanding their nature are distinguished: as constant and not interconnected peculiarities of cognitive activity and as adaptive cognitive strategies formed by an individual to solve different problems. We introduce some research data of cognitive styles of students with different degree of success in mastering a double specialty History and English Philology: successful in learning the foreign language, successful in learning History and weak and successful in subjects of both specialties. A set of methods identifying the following parameters of cognitive styles was used in the study: “fielddependency – fieldindependency”, “analyticity – syntheticity”, “impulsiveness – reflexivity”, “intellectual lability” and “leading representative systems”. It was brought to light that groups of respondents possess significant differences in every parameter of the cognitive styles. On the basis of analytical interpretation of the research data the conclusion is drawn that a cognitive style can be both specialized and quite flexible, adaptive, which depends on the range of modalities used for perception and digestion of information (what modalities are used, in what quantity and combination).

Keywords

• cognitive style
• educational success
• double specialty
• fielddependency
• fieldindependency
• analyticity
• syntheticity
• impulsiveness
• reflexivity
• cognitive difficulty
• leading representative system
• cognitive flexibility