Psychophysiological and Cognitive Mediators of the Effectiveness of Online Search for Educational Information Carried Out with the Use of a Smartphone

In modern pedagogical practice, there are active discussions about the expediency of using a smartphone as a tool for students' educational activities. The experimental study (n=24, secondary school students) was aimed at analyzing the differences in the procedural and resultant characteristics of online search for educational information carried out using a desktop computer and a smartphone. In addition, the psychophysiological and cognitive features of participants were studied by oculographic method, computerized methods for evaluating executive functions, as well as a set of psychodiagnostic techniques to assess the stylistic features of the cognitive activity. The results show that in the process of online search by a smartphone, schoolchildren view more information, but subsequently reproduce it worse (in comparison with a computer). Mediators of the effectiveness of online search for educational information carried out using a smartphone are the characteristics of psychophysiological potential (executive functions, orientation of the optical axis of the eyeball when reading a search task, the strength of the nervous system) and stylistic features of information encoding; other characteristics of cognitive potential (styles of information processing and characteristics of the organization of metacognitive experience) did not demonstrate a statistically significant contribution. The results are discussed in the context of the analysis of the possibilities and limitations of using a smartphone as an online tool for schoolchildren to search for additional information necessary for completing educational tasks.

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