Linguistic Abilities: the Contribution of Cognitive Factors, Personality Traits, and Motivational Attitudes

The present research aims at studying the interactions between linguistic abilities and various cognitive and non-cognitive psychological variables. 109 students from the faculties of foreign languages participated in this study. The main sample was additionally divided into two subgroups taking participants’ experience of foreign language study into account. Thus, the study included more experienced students of the senior courses (N = 40) and less experienced undergraduate students (N = 69). Participants had to do four language tests as the main parameters of their linguistic competence. Abstract and verbal intelligence were assessed as cognitive variables. The following personality traits were also considered: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness, and various indicators of linguistic abilities. Internal and external types of motivation are analyzed. The results of the study showed some meaningful effects. First, various language parameters turned out to be differently correlated with abstract and verbal intelligence. Second, high level of linguistic competence of the subjects who are at the very beginning of their study is significantly related to the internal motivational attitudes associated, in particular, with self-knowledge. At the same time, more experienced students with the highest level of linguistic abilities and who already have some experience and use it (many of the subjects are already working) are more focused on external attitudes associated with a sense of duty and self-esteem. Moreover, the distinct language parameters showed negative correlations with such personality traits Extraversion and Conscientiousness whereas the same parameters were positively related to Neuroticism. The discovered effects stress that the contribution of various cognitive and non-cognitive variables into linguistic abilities is mediated by different factors including language learning experience along with distinct language competences.