Metacognitive Abilities and Socio-Psychological Adaptation of People of Mature Age: Features of Relationships

The analysis is aimed at determining characteristics of relationships between metacognitive abilities and socio-psychological adaptation in homogeneous cluster groups represented by people of mature age. The main research methods were: cluster analysis, which allows us to identify relatively homogeneous groups; “bootstrap” method to check the normality of the distribution. The study also used factor analysis to determine the relationship between the characteristics of metacognitive abilities and socio-psychological adaptation. The total following variance in the factor models (86.24%, 99.77%, and 100%) as well as the levels of predictive consistency (p≤0.01 to p≤0.05) reflect the reliability and significance of the results obtained. Data processing and interpretation were carried out using qualitative and quantitative statistical methods: Fisher’s angular transformation criterion (φ*) for comparing two samples according to the occurrence frequency of the effect which is interesting to the researcher; Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test (IBM SPSS Statistics).The results of the study allow us to talk about ambivalence in the manifestation of metacognitive abilities formation in people of mature age: on the one hand, a general tendency towards a decrease in the development of metacognitive abilities was discovered, on the other hand, an increase in the degree of structural organization of the entire metacognitive system was revealed in the process of growing up, which generally compensates for the natural decline of potential resource capabilities of adults. This ambiguity in the manifestation of metacognitive abilities is reflected in their relationship with indicators of socio-psychological adaptation of adults. The identified features of the relationship in terms of harmony/inconsistency, integrity, and the content of crystallizing factors generally indicate a multidimensional structure of the relationship between metacognitive abilities and socio-psychological adaptation, when only in some cases can we talk about a direct correlation of these variables: a high level of development of metacognitive abilities determines high social-psychological adaptation.