The influence of mental models on the development of intellect in the period of gerontogenesis

The article deals with the actual problem on the influence of a subject’s mental models on his intellectual development during the period of gerontogenesis. The urgency of the problem is caused by the need for rethinking and ordering of knowledge regarding the intellectual development of human throughout the ontogenesis. It is shown that, being a process and a product of self-consciousness, mental models are formed due to the generation of cognitive, metacognitive and intentional structures, which allows a person to implement adaptive behavior in specific conditions in connection with the interpretation of the occurred problem. Generating the subject’s ideas about his specific features and capabilities, the mental model does not allow a person to look at the problem solving from another point of view, performing the function of a rigid filter. It is indicated that during the period of gerontogenesis, the substitution of concepts can be activated when the reason is considered as a result. The people under survey, who have the intellectual feeling of surprise caused by the information of motivating part of the project, showed the highest results of activating of their intellectual activity in the process of participating in the research. These people under the survey have the mental models to be diagnosed, which contribute to the human’s representation about the possibility of expanding their intellectual capabilities. It is experimentally proved that the degree of skepticism of the research participants regarding the possibility of intellectual development in old age was increased not with an age increasing of a surveyed person, but depending on the specifics of his mental models. To expend the mental models of surveyed people we used the method of scenarios, in which three variants of the solution were provided regarding the surveyed person: positive, negative and neutral. As a result of empirical research, it was stated that mental models, being the vectors of intellectual development, are subject to correction in the period of gerontogenesis.