Issues of Developing Diagnostic Methods for Special Abilities of Mastering Information Technologies

The article defines the urgency of studying the human special abilities in mastering information technologies in terms of modern requirements of the society and the principles of the knowledge economy. Theoretical analysis of the problem reveals the absence of clear theoretical positions regarding the structure of the investigated abilities, as well as the methods of their diagnostics. The authors give a definition of the studied abilities, as well as psychological grounds for developing abilities in mastering information technologies as the special ones. This article presents the results of approbation of the method of students complex diagnostics in the field of computer science and special educational disciplines - the neural network «Neuron gas», trained without a researcher on the basis of an automatic cluster analysis. This method allows conducting mass examinations of the subjects in order to sort them further into the levels of mastering the educational material. The method «Neural gas» can be used in other studies, depending on the content of the initial criteria for a cluster sorting. The article indicates further prospects of studying students special abilities in mastering information technologies and the issues of their development in terms of university education.