The Relationship of Functional Roles and their Psychological Predictors in Solving Motor Tasks in Joint Mental Activity

Abstract

Introduction. Modern society demands from young professionals non-standard ways of solving various tasks in a team. Despite the high interest in the problem of joint thinking, there is an insufficient number of comprehensive studies of psychological predictors involved in the formation of functional roles of participants in joint mental activity. Purpose. Analysis of the relationship between functional roles and their psychological predictors in solving motor tasks in joint mental activity.Materials and methods. The study involved 208 people: they are students of humanities and technical specialties of the Southern Federal University aged 17 to 21 years. The task groups consisted of four subjects. For the solution, a motor task was used under the conditional name “Blocks”. To collect the data, the following methods were used: Kettell’s 16-factor personality questionnaire; a method for determining coping behavior in stressful situations; the “Personality orientation” method; Ehlers’ motivation for avoiding failures; Ehlers’ motivation for success; SELF-assessment; diagnosis of verbal creativity; heuristic competence test; a questionnaire for determining action control; the questionnaire “Methodology of assessment by participants of subgroups of partners from the point of view of their performance of functions of selforganization of joint mental activity”. The Pearson correlation coefficient is applied.Results. The generation function is the least pronounced, which indicates a weak activity of carriers of this functional role in solving a motor-type problem. The function of semantic transmission is most pronounced, which indicates a focus on coordinating the goals of participants in mental activity to achieve a common result in solving a motor task, rather than on putting forward new hypotheses.Discussion. Analyzing the distribution of roles, their functional content, it becomes possible to directly see the implementation of the features of mental activity carried out jointly, to assess the structure of intellectual activity of cognitive interaction of group members, to better understand the procedural features of joint mental activity. The interrelation of the personal characteristics of the participants in solving problems with the functional role distribution in joint thinking is emphasized, as well as the need for a comprehensive study of the acceptance and embodiment of roles by group members.