Compound factors of students’ cognitive information processing

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical study of the intellectual and creative abilities and cognitive-activity style of students through factor analysis. First of all, we made a review of scientific works relating to intellectual and creative abilities, cognitive style, cognitive-activity style, and general learning styles. During the study, the following psychodiagnostic methods were remotely conducted to determine the intellectual and creative abilities and cognitive-activity style of 80 students of Almaty universities aged 18–22 years: “Structure of Intelligence” by R. Amthauer, “Diagnostics of Personal Creativity” by E.E. Tunic, Torrance Creativity Test and L. Rebecca’s “Identification of Cognitive Activity Style”. Factor analysis (Varimax rotation) in the SPSS program was used to determine the dimensions at the intersection of these variables. As a result, a total of 29 scales were collected into the following 8 component scales and received the following names: “cognitive-activity style”, “systemic thinking”, “intuitive ingenuity”, “persistence”, “verbal intelligence and combinatorial thinking”, “innovation”, “concentration of attention”, “systematic imagination”. These scale components were described according to their structure. The results of the study can be used by researchers in the field of educational psychology, school teachers, and university professors to determine the characteristics of students receiving and processing cognitive information.