Abstract:

The article presents the results of an empirical research of future pilots` professionally important features of cognitive and emotional-volitional mental processes. In particular, the research of the degree of their development at this stage of students' education, the search for significant correlations between each other and between individual mental processes and students' academic performance. This research was conducted in the context of studying the psychological readiness of future civil aviation pilots for their professional activities, where professionally important features of mental processes are one of the components of this concept.
The purpose of the article is to analyze the degree of development of professionally important features of cognitive and emotional-volitional mental processes of second-year civil aviation students-pilots, to empirically investigate the relationship between certain indicators of mental processes and academic performance of the subjects.
The following psychodiagnostic methods were used: test for studying the indicators of attention "Landolt's Rings"; test for studying memory "Scales of Devices", test for studying spatial and reproductive thinking "Compasses"; test for studying logical thinking "Establishing Patterns"; questionnaire for assessing neuropsychological stability "Prognosis"; questionnaire for diagnosing the emotional and volitional sphere of personality by M. Chumakov. An indicator of students' academic performance was the average grade point average in the disciplines studied by students in the second year of their studies at a higher education institution.
The research of attention found that most of the respondents need psycho-corrective intervention in all indicators of attention, and the study of memory, thinking and emotional and volitional spheres showed that the indicators of these mental processes are sufficient and have a predominantly average degree of development among the respondents. The study allowed us to obtain significant correlations between mental processes and students' academic performance, and we also found significant correlations between most indicators of mental processes, in particular between the speed of information processing and average attention productivity, average attention accuracy, working memory, spatial and reproductive thinking, neuropsychological stability; between average attention productivity and average attention accuracy, working memory, spatial and reproductive thinking, neuropsychological stability between average accuracy of attention and working memory, spatial and reproductive thinking, neuropsychological stability; between spatial and reproductive thinking and neuropsychological stability; between neuropsychological stability and integrative indicator of emotional and volitional sphere.
Thus, this empirical study made it possible to determine the degree of development of certain professionally important mental processes of student pilots as a component of their psychological readiness for professional activity, to identify correlations between their indicators and showed us the possibilities of developing those indicators that are underdeveloped in students at this stage of professional formation. The data obtained will form the basis of our Program for the Development of Civil Aviation Pilots' Psychological Readiness for Professional Activity.

Keywords:

Mental processes, academic performance, psychological readiness for professional activity, civil aviation pilots.