Peculiarities of Thinking Formation in the Digital Environment

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to identify the features of young men's thinking, whose mental development carried out in conditions of life virtualization (in a network society). Material and methods. The study involved 319 mentally healthy respondents who study in the universities of St. Petersburg at the specialties associated with computer technology. The control group consists of the 45 respondents from 38 to 50 years. The choice of the control group is related to the fact that the thinking of people of this age category was formed in the pre-digital era. The research program includes classical pathopsychological methods "Exclusion of excess" and "Comparison of concepts". Results and conclusion. The modern youth thinking diagnosis revealed the existence of "pseudo-psychopatological" thinking phenomena (РPF). The answers based on latent signs, various variants of distortion of generalization and lack of generalization were assigned to РPF. PPF considered as having cultural and historical genesis. Comparison of the two samples according to the incidence rate of the РТP by Fisher's angular transformation method showed that the differences between the percentages of the prevalence of the test feature between the groups are significant. The research of the modern youth` thinking shows the increasing of the РPF `number specific to the modern mental norm. Generalizations based on latent signs, broad generalizations, as well as a number of parameters characteristic of distortion of thinking, should not be considered as specific indicators of thinking disorders, since they can occur normally. The results should be considered in evaluation of the results of pathopsychological experiments for clarification of norm and pathology of mental activity markers.