Psychological conditions and predictors of intellectual productivity in schoolchildren

Background. The article examines a regression model as an indicator predicting successful intellectual activity in older adolescents at school, given the particular sensitivity of this developmental stage marked by the formation and development of conceptual, metacognitive, and intentional experience structures in the subject of activity, characterized by maximum resolution capabilities in the intellectual sphere of human activity. In the presented study, the construct of intellectual competence as an indicator of productive intellectual activity was reformulated in terms of conceptual abilities, indicators of psychometric intelligence and school performance of older adolescents. Also, predictors and conditions for the manifestation of successful intellectual activity were determined, which determined the possibility of studying the components of intellectual competence due to the special sensitivity to changes in the environment (for example, educational standards) of the construct of intellectual competence itself as a manifestation of the productivity of intellectual activity.

Purpose. To identify specific predictors of academic performance in late adolescence in terms of manifestations of conceptual experience (semantic, categorical and conceptual abilities) and indicators of psychometric intelligence in late adolescence through modeling (regression) of the construct of intellectual competence as an indicator of the productivity of intellectual activity.

Materials and methods. The primary method used in this study is empirical, employing regression modeling of intellectual productivity indicators in older adolescents. The study involved 110 senior adolescents (56 girls and 54 boys) aged 15-17 years – students of a secondary comprehensive school in Khimki, Moscow Region. In order to avoid introducing additional distractors into the already established groups of study participants (formed school classes), no external equalization by gender or age was carried out. It should also be noted that this study did not aim to identify the specifics of intellectual productivity based on the class of schoolchildren. The methodological framework included the following assessments: “Conceptual Synthesis” (by M.A. Kholodnaya, Y.I. Sipovskaya, 2023, “Visual Semantics of Words” (by E.Yu. Artemyeva, 1999), “Three-Word Generalization” (by M.A. Kholodnaya, Y.I. Sipovskaya, 2023), “Raven’s Progressive Matrices” (by J. Raven, 2002), and an electronic academic performance log.

Results. In the course of determining the predictors of intellectual productivity during regression modeling, a model was obtained that describes/predicts this indicator with 99.0% accuracy. The resulting model consists of categorical abilities. This indicator is one of the manifestations of a person's conceptual experience, which indicates its key importance for successful intellectual activity in late adolescence. Thus, it was concluded that, in accordance with the results obtained, there is reason to conclude that by late adolescence, the indicators of intellectual activity productivity are associated exclusively with manifestations of categorical abilities of conceptual experience, which act as predictors of successful intellectual activity as an indicator of intellectual competence. The presented study established the fact of an imbalance in the development of intellectual abilities of high school students, whose conceptual thinking is insufficiently formed to ensure a qualitative increase in the intellectual resources of a teenager.