Peculiarities of Neurocognitive Processes in Pupils of Secondary School in Meritocratic Education

Abstract

Psychological and physiological features of gifted schoolchildren in the context of the general tendency towards learning intensification and excessive use of technical means of learning determine their extreme sensitivity to the factors of the educational environment. The introduction of a meritocratic education system requires checking the compliance between the educational process organization and the psychological and physiological schoolchildren capabilities. This article describes the study on the comparison of neurocognitive processes of the secondary school pupils (10-11 years) in meritocratic (n = 60) and traditional (n = 26) educational systems based on the comparison of the relative spectral power of the electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency bands at rest state and cognitive load (mental arithmetic with subtraction). EEG potentials were led monopolarly from 21 locus according to the international system "10-20" using the average reference electrode. Artefact-free EEG datasets of 35–45 s length were registered and analyzed.
 The common characteristics of EEG patterns taken from the schoolchildren at meritocratic education include a significantly higher proportion of alpha activity in the frontal cortex and beta-2 activity throughout the convex cerebral surface at rest and cognitive load. Mental arithmetic caused changes in all EEG frequency bands, mainly in the frontoparietal network in the condition under meritocratic education, while under traditional education the changes were mainly registered in the delta band in the temporal and parietal cerebral cortex. We have found out that schoolchildren in the meritocratic system are characterized by a higher level of cerebral functional maturity and demonstrate more mature activation patterns of cortical structures during the mental arithmetic testing. This indicates the beneficial developmental impact of meritocratic education.