FEATURES OF COGNITIVE STYLES IN THE CHESS GAME
Authors: Pavlovskaya V. A. 
Published: August 2020

The article discusses various approaches to understanding the essence of cognitive styles, and provides a description of the most common types of cognitive styles. In the modern situation of the existence of various types of information influences on the emotional and volitional sphere of preschool and primary school children, problems of low motivation for any type of activity, poor memory, perception disorders are found. Сhess is a means of constructively solving these problems. From the set of cognitive styles studied in the scientific environment, 10 types were selected, namely, utility / gender independence, narrowness / breadth in the range of equivalence, rigidity/flexibility, narrowness/breadth of the category, tolerance to unrealistic experience, narrowness/breadth of the category, focusing/scanning control, smoothing/sharpening, impulsiveness/reflexivity, cognitive simplicity/complexity, concreteness/abstraction. Definitions of each of the indicated cognitive styles and their hypothetical relationship with the checkmate game are given. Based on the fact that chess is an intellectual activity that includes cognitive processes, some psychological features of the chess game are described and designated, hypothetically associated with a specific type of cognitive style. The author emphasizes that in the organization and effectiveness of learning chess, as well as other types of educational activity, a large role is played by such cognitive style as impulsivity/reflexivity and field-dependence/field-independence, as well as the development of mobility and flexibility of the cognitive style, namely, the ability to switch from one style parameter to another at the necessary moment of the game.

Some problems in the study of cognitive styles are identified. Most research focuses on the study of utility and differentiation, which is not a comprehensive study of cognitive styles. The nature of cognitive styles is not fully understood. It is also unclear the specific age characteristic of the formation and manifestation of a particular cognitive style in a particular person. The article reveals the concept of chess success as the ability to focus on a group of breakout pieces, creating three levels of significance of the pieces on the Board and distributing the controlled fields of the Board into two levels: significant and insignificant. Some stylistic features of the checkmate game of such world Champions as Botvinnik, Tal, and Petrosyan are described. It is concluded that chess is a means of versatile development of the child. This is a universal discipline of the game character, aimed at fostering a common culture. Chess affects the development of external and internal speech, combinatorial and logical thinking, will, vital activity, criticality, the ability to self-analysis and self-assessment, self-education. The review suggests that in teaching children, among other things, it is advisable to use the following algorithm: to determine the child’s cognitive styles and the degree of their rootedness (formation) in cognitive processes; to identify fragments (components) of learning chess most associated with the advantages of a particular cognitive style and take this connection into account; to train or develop children’s cognitive mobility, i.e. the ability to switch from one style to another if necessary.