Introduction. Since the introduction of profile education in the schools of the Russian Federation, scientific works studying the impact of profilization of education on the psychological and psychophysiological characteristics of the personality of schoolchildren are of great interest. The current educational situation is characterized by a contradiction between the lack of knowledge of the impact of professionalization of education on the intellectual and personal development of students and the active introduction of specialized education into the school system. The purpose of the article is to analyze the impact of profile training on cognitive features (voluntary attention, memory and mental abilities) of senior schoolchildren. Materials and methods. The study involved 105 students of 11 grades of general education and specialized (natural science and humanities) directions of educational institutions of Belgorod. Depending on the choice of the general education profile, all the subjects were divided into 3 groups: students in the general education program; students in the humanities program; students in the natural science program. The study was conducted using the methodology of diagnostics of arbitrary attention “Arrangement of numbers” (adapted by E.E. Mironova); diagnostics of the features of working (operational) memory "RAM" (A.R. Luria) and the methodology of diagnostics of the general level of intelligence “Progressive Raven matrices” (J. Raven, L. Penrose). The Kruskal-Wallis H-test and one-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to test the assumption that there are differences in the cognitive sphere of high school students enrolled in programs of different educational profiles. Results. It is proved that students studying under the program of the natural science profile have higher indicators of the cognitive sphere than students studying in the socio-humanitarian and general education profiles. Schoolchildren studying in the socio-humanitarian direction have a higher overall level of voluntary attention, operative memory and general intelligence in comparison with high school students of the general education class. Conclusions. The obtained results are recommended to be used by teachers and teachers-psychologists to optimize the educational process and organize psychological support for specialized education and training in general education classes.