The diffusion of information and communication technologies among children, youth and adults has become an evolving phenomenon. The end of the last century was characterized by rapid technological development and by deep changes in several aspects of human activities, often described as orientation of the world to the “knowledge age“. Such changes have led to many discussions about the roles of upbringing and education as well as ICT in lessons and learning in a new era and, of course, also about the negative effects of ICT mainly on children and the youth. We focused our attention on the effect of ICT on contemporary adolescents, both in terms of its use and possible misuse, particularly in the field of possible ICT addiction. We gave the questionnaire of our own construction to a group of adolescents: there were 1542 student respondents at the age from 15 up to 23, with an average age M=16.99, Sd=4.28, 647 boys and 895 girls. The independent variables were: gender, respondents’ age, the type of attended school, i.e., secondary vocational school=106 respondents, college=697 respondents, grammar school=739 respondents, evaluation marks from the last school certificate of the Czech language and Math. The obtained data were subjected to factor analysis. Programme Varimax orthogonal (NCSS) was used and according to Cronbach’s alpha (0.86), a critical value |0.30| was selected. 3 factors were generated: F1 Tendency to ICT addiction, F2 ICTa study aid and F3 Current daily use and misuse. More than a  half of the respondents use daily this combination of ICT equipment: a PC, a  laptop, a tablet and a mobile phone. We found out that the level of addiction to the internet is average; the internet as a study aid is used exceptionally frequently, daily use and misuse is slightly below average. Jan Lašek, Petra Kalibová, Jana Andršová Czech republic 73Adolescents and Information and Communication Technologies We chose the internet as a representative of all possibilities of ICT, as an easily accessible medium of contemporaneity. Based on a factor analysis, it can be stated that the more the internet is used for studying, the more possible the addiction to it is and also the tendency to its daily use and misuse.

This validation study deals with verification of the Czech version of CASSS. The questionnaire comprises 60 items. Students assess the frequency of each event described by an item and its importance. The research was realized on a sample of 274 grade 6 to 9 students and yielded similar psychometric properties as the original American version of CASSS (2000). The factor analysis identified five-factor structure corresponding to the variables of parents, teacher, classmates, best friend, and people in school. Factor loadings ranged from 0.31 to 0.87 (compared with 0.52 to 0.81 in the original version) within each of the five components. The identified structure explains approximately 48 % of variance. Reliability estimated using Cronbach alpha was computed for each subscale (parents, teacher, classmates, best friend, and people in school). The coefficients ranged from 0.84 to 0.93 (compared with 0.92 to 0.95 in the original version). Cronbach alpha for the whole questionnaire is 0.95 (compared with 0.96 in the original version). The method can be used within the conditions of Czech schools to determine the actual state of individuals and groups, individual counselling and evaluation of intervention effects.

This article characterizes motivation for learning and school anxiety among pupils of the last two grades of primary school and junior high school students. The research method is the “I and My School” test by E. Zwierzyńska and A. Matuszewski. The research pinpoints low motivation for learning and an average level of anxiety among the tested adolescents. The gender does not diversify the motivation level. Girls are characterized by a higher level of school anxiety than boys. The motivation level rises in junior high school and the level of anxiety decreases. Good students have an equally low motivation level as poor ones but at the same time good students have a higher level of school anxiety. The following factors influence the low level of motivation among the tested students: general reluctance towards learning, low interest as far as the lesson is concerned and the teacher’s behaviour.

In the present paper a triad of intelligence – task solving strategies – cognitive styles is taken into account Rather than renouncing the traditional methods of studying intelligence, it was decided that separate qualitative ways of information processing, constituting the underlying cause in solving test tasks, shall be explained with the example of the Wechsler`s WAIS-R Scale of Intelligence in order to show their relationship with interindividual diversification of adolescents within the scope of the level of cognitive tasks performance From the research it follows that the intellectual functioning of adolescents while solving a certain type of cognitive tasks (called psychometric intelligence) should be estimated both on the basis of quantitative ratings (the level of task performance difficulty) and qualitative ratings (the identified manners of task performance) The effectiveness of the intellectual functioning of an individual is defined by the choice of such task solving strategies which are determined by an interactive influence of many variables, among which one can find cognitive tasks, psychometric intelligence and the preferred style of thinking The less intelligent subjects functioned effectively in the research only when they applied a strategy in line with their cognitive style The analysis conducted among highly intelligent subjects showed that they solved the tasks consisting in inferring similarities with the same effectiveness, applying both strategies, regardless of their preferred style of cognitive functioning

Adolescents are born into society and do not get to chose their parents and the families they will grow up in. If the family’s core is healthy, vital and if it meets the needs and special demands of its members, then they will have better chances of developing positive self-esteem. In this study we were interested in how important family is to adolescents and how adolescents enrolled in different secondary school programmes (4-year and 3-year courses) see themselves, how high their self-esteem is and what differences there are in their self-esteem in regard to their gender, secondary school programme (4-year secondary school, programme: grammar school and school of economics and 3-year secondary school, programme: hairdresser and car mechanic) and academic record. The study showed that their self-esteem level is high, that family is the most important value for adolescents, that it is more important to girls than boys and that parental love is the most significant factor within family. Furthermore, we found that adolescent self-esteem is moderately high and has a positive mark regardless of their gender and academic record.