Psychology in Russia: State of the Art, Moscow: Russian Psychological Society, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 2014, 2, 120 p.

The first issue of 2014 opens with the special section “The Second Russian-Japanese Forum of Social Sciences and Humanities”. This forum was welcomed by Lomonosov Moscow State University in Ooctober 2013 and included a seminar on psychology. A team of researchers from the Graduate School of Arts and Letters of Tohoku University led by Dr. Tsuneyuki Abe, the head of Psychology Chair, and the Lomonosov Moscow State University Faculty of Psychology professors discussed current advances in psychological science in Russia and Japan with an emphasis on psychophysiology and social psychology. The corresponding section of the journal presents articles based on the seminar papers.

Tsuneyuki Abe, Juthatip Wiwattanapantuwong and Akio Honda explore the experience of a survivor in a great natural disaster. In the article “Dark, cold, and hungry, but full of mutual trust: Manners among the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake victims” they deconstruct simplified “urban legends” about extremely high levels of helpfulness among Japanese earthquake victims, and present valuable insights into actual resources promoting solidarity and support.

Contemporary Russian psychology faces an uphill battle in joining the international mainstream after decades of isolation. Among Russian psychologists today, we can see traces of the “globalist” (integrative) and “counter-globalist” (isolationist) tendencies that first manifested during the Soviet period. At that time, Russian psychology was shaped as a mono-methodological trend; it addressed fundamental theoretical problems, was based on Marxist philosophy and was oriented to reflect the standards of the natural sciences. In the post-Soviet period, fundamental social changes shifted the development of psychology as a science and different standards were adopted. Contemporary Russian psychology is substantially diversified. When searching for “the optimum level of integration” with global peers, it is necessary to take into account the theoretical and methodological orientations of the scientists, as their motives and constraints with respect to integration can be substantially different. Here we explain in detail how the different theoretical understandings and predilections of Russian psychologists determine their interests, ideals and constraints with respect to integration with the mainstream.

The article discloses the main potential aspects of cooperation between psychology and culturology, which are connected through their mutual determination of the psyche (psychic reality) and culture. The paper acknowledges the key importance of the cultural-historical traditions initiated by Lev Vygotsky and his successors as well as the idea that their potential has yet to be realized by contemporary psychology. A new vision of culture is given to culturology (in comparison with traditional cultural studies) and its significance in conducting modern psychological research: a novel problematization of psychology’s subject matter and its methodological support. Different aspects of the psyche’s cultural determination, the experience with cultural psychology (historical psychology) in researching historical mental types (“Annals school”) are reviewed alongside with the role of culture knowledge in analyzing the psychological results of this determination. The consistency of culture and its components represented and internalized by mental structures is announced as a fundamental cultural basis of psychological research. The return influence of psychological phenomena on culture’s various aspects, as well as related cultural and psychological problems, are determined by the fundamental place and role of the psyche in any given cultural system as well as the contradictions that exist between a culture and the psyche. All this requires further examination. One of the most vital contemporary challenges facing psychology is the problem of the mental peculiarities of the consciousness, which can be principally explained in terms of a consistent culturological approach. Interrelationships between the psyche’s properties and conscious cultural functions are shown through example of aesthetic attitude.

The motivation system in adolescent high school pupilsstudents of was studied (9^th and 11^th grade students) on the basis of a complex approach and a comparative analysis of emotional attitudes and a deliberate preference of values (general and educational). It was shown that the significance and accessibility of analyzed groups of values are, to a considerable extent, determined by a dominant motivation. Also, a tendency was found towards the contra-positioning of conscious and emotional attitudes with values — values which are highly attractive on the motivation-and-emotional level, but on the level of conscience, are underestimated compared with other ones. This also determines the further trend of development of a personality in the direction of acceptance of sociallyapproved general and educational values, and leads to the convergence of personality development of schoolchildren at that stage of their life. Also revealed were certain gender- related features of value orientations, which were relatinged to the more advanced development of girls when compared to boys of the same age.

This study looks at how well students majoring in educational sciences and psychology were able to use spontaneously metacognitive strategies for reading comprehension. Students majoring in education have demonstrated ineffective learning goals and strategies. The results of the study show that only 7 percent of education majors sought to establish logical connections between the text fragments in multiple-choice assessment by contrast with 48 percent of psychology majors. The study showed that the number of education and psychology majors with metacognitive strategy of systematization has increased in the situation of self-formulated answer.

Human error is commonly differentiated into three different types. These are: errors in perception, errors in decision and errors in sensation. This analysis is based on classical psychophysics (Fechner, 1860) and describes the errors of detection and perception. Decision- making errors are evaluated in terms of the theory of signal detection (McNicholson, 1974), and errors of sensation or sensitivity are evaluated in terms of proprioceptive information (van Beers, 2001).

Each of these stages developed its own method of evaluation that has influenced the development of ergonomics in the event of errors in perception and the verbal assessment of personality (stress, impulsiveness, burnout, etc.) in decision-making errors. Here we represent the method we have developed, the Proprioceptive Diagnosis of Temperament and Character (DP- TC) test, for the specific assessment of errors of perception or expressivity which are based on fine motor precision performance.

Each of the described errors types are interdependent of each other in such a manner that observable stress in behaviour may be caused due to: the inadequate performance of a task due to the perception of the person (i.e. from right to left for a right-handed person); performing a task that requires attentive decision-making to be performed too hastily; undertaking a task that does not correspond to the prevailing disposition of the person.

Experimental data was obtained from a dichotic listening test by patients with unilateral brain lesions and corpus callosum pathology (agenesis, cysts, degenerative changes, etc). Efficiency index analysis shows that interhemispheric interaction in the audioverbal sphere depends to a greater extent on the right hemisphere state. The dichotic listening technique is not an informative means of studying hemispheric interaction, since it does not allow a clear distinction between hemispheric symptoms and symptoms of pathology of the corpus callosum. Thus, violations of hemispheric relations caused by disorders of the corpus callosum and cerebral hemispheres change worth more right hemisphere activity.

Based on the analysis of psychosocial models of alcoholism and depression the general and specific factors of occurrence and course of illness are identified in the present study. The authors put forward hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of activation of psychological addiction to alcohol as an ineffective coping strategy. The necessity of empirical research needed to refine the techniques and targets of patient care within the psychiatric and psychological care is justified. The results of the pilot study show that depressed patients who are subject to alcohol dependence feature marked distress in interpersonal relations, coupled with hostility and aim at gaining profit and pleasure by manipulating other people. These patients are hostile to others, while in interpersonal relationships personal safety is important to them, so they may be more likely to resort to manipulation. In their attitudes with respect to health the communication of these patients is characterized by hedonistic tendencies and histrionic traits in interpersonal contacts.

The psychological aspect of treating HIV-infected substance users entails changing their behaviour, as their behaviour is what leads to the risk of them transmitting and spreading HIV. Psychological treatment must facilitate their adaptation so that they may be otherwise treated for substance abuse and HIV. We propose establishing the psychological objective of helping patients overcome substance addiction by addressing their internal representation of the disease (IRD), value-sense and motivational sphere, as well as their relationships with their physician, as this is the main person who interacts with the patient in the clinic. An IRD study of patients with an opioid dependency, complicated with infectious diseases, showed that the IPD emotional level of opioid patients, as interconditional for other levels, can be an indicator of the status and impact of the main objective. A comparative study of substance users who received psychotherapy with those not receiving psychotherapy showed that the value-sense and motivational sphere is also an important target for preventive action. A study of the physician’s image of drug treatment clinics’ patients revealed that increases in the communicative competence of drug treatment facilities’ personnel represents a third course of preventing the transmission of HIV among substance dependent patients.

The study of motherhood is a promising and relevant field of psychology. This article represents the results of a study in which a socio-psychological analysis of reproductive attitudes and demographic behaviour was conducted. The study also shows the relationship between attitudes related to motherhood and women’s cultural affiliations.

The factors that contribute to the nature of attitudes towards motherhood and the interaction between these factors were studied. According to the results of this study, we distinguished the most significant characteristics of the attitudes to motherhood that influence the nature of the relationship between a mother and her unborn child.

The model of the development of attitudes to motherhood proposed by R. V. Ovcharova was detailed. We considered the influence of factors on the nature of attitudes to motherhood as well as the influence of factors on each other.

The results of this study allow us to describe the psychological portraits of women with different attitudes to motherhood.

The aim of the study is to consider technology-related changes in psychological needs and boundaries that affect one’s personal adaptation to the info-communication society, as well as how they relate to problematic or excessive technology use. Based on the psychological model of the consequences of technology use, we’ve picked two forms of technology use (one related to mobile phones and the other related to the Internet) from a revised version of our Technology-Related Psychological Consequences Questionnaire. The new version includes nine questions: two assessing the excessive use of technology (the inability to resist using technology and subjective dependence), four assessing changes in psychological boundaries (boundaries extension and violation, easiness-related and opportunity-related preference for technology) and the other three measuring technology-related needs (functionality, convenience and image making). In the normative sample (N=132), appropriate reliability, factor validity and convergent validity were demonstrated in comparisons to the picture measure of the technology-related boundaries change. Based on hierarchical regression and moderator analysis, it was shown that changes in psychological boundaries affect the excessive use of technology (explaining an additional 17-27% of the variance) after adjusting for frequency of use and age group. The extension of boundaries and ease-of-use-related preference for mobile phones versus the Internet predicted satisfaction with life after adjusting for frequency of use, age group, inability to resist and subjective dependency respectively; however, the figures were not statistically significant. Thus, our data supports the hypothesis that there are different kinds of technology-related changes in psychological boundaries that manifest themselves in the subjective feeling of dependence on technology and the feeling that it is impossible to do without technology, which might in some cases be important for personal satisfaction with life.