Cognitive preconditions and interaction styles between university students in the information environment

The question of what cognitive characteristics of a subject can be considered as cognitive strategies of interaction in the information environment is discussed in the article. Three groups of indicators related to the assessment of potential characteristics of the subject’s cognitive strategies were involved in the conducted empirical study: structural characteristics of intelligence (offered by R. Amthauer and R. Cattell, styles of thinking and assessment of the personality’s self-regulation style. As a result of the factor analysis, five main components were identified that determine the cognitive characteristics of the subject of information interaction. The first factor includes variables correlated with “mathematical” and “spatial” intelligence, that is, they are professionally significant for specialists working in the field of technology. The second factor includes the load on the variables “modeling conditions”, “programming actions” and “the result assessment”. The third factor comprises assessments on scales that are related to verbal abilities: “word exclusion” and “analogies”, as well as an assessment of general (non-verbal or “cultural-free”) intelligence. The fourth and fifth factors differ from the previous ones that they, to a greater extent, unite stylistic cognitive characteristics. The fourth factor includes “analytical”, “realistic” styles of thinking and the flexibility of self-regulation. In addition, two factors have been presented that determine cognitive interaction strategies in the information environment: a strategy with a flexible approach to searching, selecting and testing the data, and a strategy for work with information, taking account of the target and practical components.