Background. Digital texts have become widespread in today’s society, both in day-to-day and professional life, as well as in education. Still there is some risk and we cannot realize all the potential outcomes since psychology has not thoroughly explored their use.

Objective. We studied the differences between the effectiveness of reading parallel and consequent texts.

Design. Our sample was 45 adults of ages 18 to 59. We adapted “Similarities,” the “Analytic-Holistic” cognitive style scale, and “Complex analogies” for online use.

Results. We found individual preferences for either parallel or consequent text presentation. The results of the parallel text presentation were worse than those with the consequent, and positively correlated with holistic style and verbal intellect. Success in working with parallelly presented text depends on the individual’s cognitive features and abilities. Parallel reading is a comprehensive cognitive task and requires more cognitive skills and higher intellect than consequent reading.

The article presents the results of empirical studies of information processing in patients with migraine in a headache period and in healthy control by means of tests for the assessment of psychopathological symptoms and cognitive styles tests: Gottschaldt’s Embedded figures test (EFT) (style field dependence/field independence) and Cluster Classification test — a new method, based on the design of artificial concepts. Patients with migraine showed lower stability and selectivity of the processes of structuring information. A positive correlation of structure in patients with migraine and exposure to psychopathological processes (healthy observed an inverse relationship) may be a consequence of adaptation to high for them requirements for the structuring of information imposed by the environment.