COGNITIVE STYLES COULD BE IMPLICITLY ASSESSED IN THE INTERNET ENVIRONMENT: REFLECTION-IMPULSIVITY IS MANIFESTED IN INDIVIDUAL MANNER OF SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION

The present research aimed to determine whether the cognitive style of reflection – impulsivity (R-I) diagnosed in a standard way also manifests itself in the Internet environment. A special task was designed that involved searching for particular information on the Internet. Science students took part in two studies (pilot study, n=11, and replication, n=37). Data analyses revealed that indicators of performance in the simple computer task allow the differentiation of respondents in terms of the R-I dimension. The time spent on reading the command and thinking of a strategy for obtaining the information revealed a high correlation with R-I. The amount of explained R-I variance reached 82%, indicating that the online searching task is a valid indicator of this cognitive style. The practical conclusion is that the Internet environment may be used in cognitive styles' assessment which, in turn, may lead to creating interactive, cognitive style-friendly hypermedia learning facilities.