Comparative study of learning styles, resilience and problem solving skills in professional and non-professional chess players

To obtain a master's degree in the field of general psychology

Abstract

The general purpose of this research is to compare learning styles, resilience and problem solving skills in professional and non-professional chess players. The method of this research is descriptive correlational. The statistical population includes all chess players under the supervision of the Chess Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The research sample consists of 200 chess players (100 professional chess players and 100 non-professional chess players) from Tehran, Gilan and Mazandaran provinces. The criteria for distinguishing professional chess players from non-professionals is to have an international rank of more than 1800.  It should be mentioned that the sample size was selected based on simple random sampling in the number of 306 people and the people responded to Kolb's Learning Styles Questionnaire (2005), Connor and Davidson's (2003) Resilience, and Cassidy and Long's (1996) Problem Solving Strategies. The resulting data were analyzed with independent groups t-test, Kramer's V-test, multivariate regression analysis with 21spss software. The findings showed that between style There is a difference in the learning abilities of professional and non-professional chess players according to their gender, age groups, experience and education. There is no difference between the resilience of professional and non-professional chess players according to their gender, age groups, experience and education. There is a difference between the problem solving skills of professional and non-professional chess players according to their gender, age groups, background and education. There is also a relationship between learning styles with resilience and problem solving skills. There is no relationship between learning styles and problem solving skills. In a general conclusion, it should be said that learning styles and problem solving skills have been introduced by many experts as one of the success factors in higher education. Although it is generally considered that people can achieve more success in work life by being aware of their learning styles and increasing their resilience.

Key words: learning styles, resilience, problem solving skills, chess players.

Today's complex human life is the product of thousands of years of struggle for survival and a better life. In other words, the complexities of human life today are the product of thousands of years of evolution. Early humans preserved their acquisitions through transmission to the next generations and this cycle has been repeated until today. Today, we are the heirs of a precious treasure of knowledge and experience of our ancestors, and by adding our experience to it, we will leave it to future generations. In order to transfer his knowledge and experience, mankind has needed to discover and invent principles that we know today as education. Education has undergone many changes in its evolutionary path by human hands. Especially since the time when man has reached a stage of maturity in terms of thinking and thinking and started building theories. So far, many theories have been proposed by many people, and most of them have only focused on one aspect of the many aspects of human beings and have had little comprehensiveness and systematicity. Extreme attention to the body, education and training as preparation, education and training as the flourishing of talent, and education as the cultivation or formation of the mind, attention to the past and its repetition, extreme importance attached to the role of the environment as discussed in behaviorist schools, and such cases show a bias in the matter of education and training. For thousands of years, humans have equated education with habit, they have generalized the current findings from animal experiments to humans, and they have emphasized on training combined with repetition and practice. In all the views that have continued in different schools until the middle of the 20th century, they have considered learning and teaching as a process of growth, they have believed in learning part by part, and they have assumed the parts to be meaningful separately from each other. In contrast to these views, other theories have been proposed that originate from two main beliefs;

1- the uniqueness and importance of man himself

2- a strong reaction against machine-oriented and materialistic approaches to the study of man (Kazemi, 2006).. Nowadays, the metaphor of a machine is less used to describe a human being, and a human being is considered as a complex living being that follows complex patterns.

Just as the universe and the elements of nature follow specific patterns, humans also choose a specific pattern for themselves to survive, which consists of many components such as biology, cognition, emotion, behavior, social relations, etc. is In other words, it can be said that human behavior is the product of the interaction of these components, which interact with each other in a specific pattern (Johnson [1] and Johnson, 2005, p. 21). In order to continue living and improve his condition, man needs a level of motivation, which, according to experts, is a process that stimulates and excites a person's behavior. It is also a type of orientation in behavior that leads to rewards. It follows from the definition that the main source of human behavior is motivation, and therefore learning is one of the important factors in human life that is influenced by this. As mentioned before, this motivation can interact with many factors in a complex way. In other words, the individual's own system achieves adaptive motivational patterns by having a level of motivation and examining the complex relationships of motivational methods and appropriate self-regulation strategies (Bandura [2] 1997 p. 20). Playing chess requires the organization of several psychological operations such as paying attention, perceptual grouping, and different functions of memory. Currently, cognitive psychologists are of the opinion that playing chess requires substantial practice. Therefore, chess is considered as a special example that requires special experience for a specialized action. In this text, Simon and Chase clearly formulate the ten-year rule of expertise, which implies that at least ten years of intensive practice is necessary to reach the level of a chess grandmaster. Several recent studies and reviews support the ten-year rule by demonstrating a consistent relationship between rigorous chess practice and chess performance using longitudinal and retrospective study designs. Hence, the positive relationship between practice accumulation and chess performance is similar to the practice-performance relationship in other disciplines such as music, sports, and education (Erickson 2004 p. 59). However, although practice is important in determining checkerboard performance, general intelligence, visuospatial intelligence, and aptitude are also discussed as factors related to checkerboard performance. Therefore, a number of authors support some kind of relationship between practice and talent that explains chess performance (Howard 2013, p. 30). Despite extensive behavioral studies, the neural bases of chess skill and performance are not fully understood. On the other hand, problem solving skill is the ability that enables a person to give a correct answer when faced with a problem using the knowledge and skills he has. Problem solving skills help a person to solve their problems and problems in a logical and orderly manner, to actively investigate the consequences and different aspects of the problem and its solutions (Yar Mohammadi Vasil et al., 2019, p. 31). On the other hand, resilience is the process of optimal adaptation in the face of difficulties, traumatic events, calamities, threats or any stressful situation. Some of these situations include relationship and family problems, serious health problems, work and financial pressures. Resilience means "coming back" from past hard experiences. Researches have shown that resilience is natural and common. Most people are resilient in dealing with events. For example, consider people's response to the Bam earthquake, many were able to start a new life. The conducted research indicates that some resilient people, after facing difficult life situations, return to the normal level of performance, while the performance of some of these people improves compared to the past after facing failures, calamities and difficulties. In general, resilient people accept the realities of life with ease. They believe that life is meaningful. This belief is usually supported by their values. They have remarkable abilities to quickly adapt to big changes.  According to what was said, the purpose of this research is to compare learning styles, resilience and problem solving skills in professional and non-professional chess players of the country. Be it learning styles.