Kognityviniai gebėjimai ir jų veiksniai: Lietuvos jaunimo tyrimas originalia metodika
ENCognitive ability is an ability to use cognitive functions - attention, memory, logical, spatial thinking, etc. Usually they are associated with many external variables. However, a peculiar cohesion exists between them and educational achievements. Foreign scientists emphasize high correlation between these phenomena. The search for similar surveys in Lithuania failed although it wouldn’t be difficult to get a fairly correct prognosis of study achievements knowing specific cognitive abilities of people in a particular age group. The purpose of the research was to reveal how cognitive functions of students were related to educational factors, such as educational level, study achievements, subjective assessment of achievements. The objectives of research were as follows: to present the validity and reliability characteristics of cognitive ability analysis methodology; to reveal and to compare the characteristics of cognitive abilities typical to the students with different educational levels; to establish how different educational level, subjective and objective assessment of knowledge were related to the cognitive abilities of students. The cognitive ability analysis methodology consists of these structural parts: attentiveness, logical thinking, numerical thinking, two-dimensional and three-dimensional spatial thinking and arithmetical calculation tasks. The validity and reliability of methodology is sufficient. The internal consistency of methodology is good. Research subjects were given Raven Progressive Matrices and Verbal Proficiency Tests by G. Merkys together with cognitive ability analysis methodology. 226 respondents participated in this research. The research was conducted at different level educational institutions: universities, colleges, vocational schools, secondary schools and gymnasia.Some social and demographic variables have an impact on cognitive ability test results: gender, age, domicile of subjects, education of their parents, socioeconomic status of the family, and other. Nearly on all scales young men performed better than young women, residents of major cities performed better than those that came from smalls towns and villages, young people from two-parent families performed better than those from single-parent families, children from affluent families performed better than those from needy families. Methodology performance was better of those university students who after graduating from gymnasia chose day time studies and whose studies are financed by the state. It was established that this methodology can well differentiate subjects of different educational levels. Sufficiently distinct cognitive ability differences have been determined in low and high education subject groups: higher cognitive ability scale results have been obtained in high education level subject groups. Subjective assessment of students’ knowledge showed the cohesion between all cognitive ability scales and subjective assessment of knowledge of exact sciences. Objective assessments of student knowledge (i. e., exam averages) are statistically reliably related to all cognitive ability methodology scale assessment averages.
