Articles

The authors give the quantitative estimation of the macropsychological state of modern Russian society based on its political, social and economic characteristics. For these purposes the composite index of the macropsychological state of society is developed. It combines two secondary indexes such as a societal psychological stability index and a societal socio-psychological well-being index.

Dans le texte, il s’agit de sources de la compréhension des concepts du signe et du symbole dans la théorie historico-culturelle ainsi que de leur rôle dans le développement de l’enfant et dans le processus de la médiation. On y parle aussi de limites de l’approche historico-culturelle en ce qui concerne la compréhension du signe et du symbole et d’autres concepts liés avec eux.

The article describes the main stages and directions of the development of social psychology in USSR and Russia. The comparison of theoretical approaches of Russian and Western social psychology is carried out. Special emphasis is made on the problem of social cognition and coping, which are important in the conditions of changing reality. New professional tasks of social psychology are discussed. The necessity of finding a new paradigm in social psychological investigations in conditions of cardinal transformations and ambiguity is stated as well as vectors and tendencies of its elaboration.

This volume contains articles of Russian psychologists and is dedicated to the 11th European Congress of Psychology, which is held in July 2009, in Oslo, Norway. The main purpose of this edition is to introduce Russian contemporary psychology to international psychological community. The team of contributors occurred to be rather accidental. Most of them are psychologists who decided to participate in the Congress in Oslo and received travel grants from one of the national academic foundations: the Russian Foundation of Basic Research and the Russian Foundation for Humanities. A wish to participate in the European Congress, the financial support of the academic foundations and a manuscript in English, – these were the conditions of membership in this project. Such an occasional cast has both positive and negative aspects.

This article describes the connection between the use of types of mental imagery by athletes and the level of their imagination. Taking the model of imagery use suggested by K. Martin, S. Moritz and C. Hall, the authors used a Russian version of “The Sport Imagery Questionnaire” (SIQ) with soccer players 8, 10 and 14 years old. The data shows that subjects with a higher level of imagination are more inclined to use mental imagery in their practice. Age differences in types of imagery usage are shown. The results indicated that mental-imagery training can result in enhanced performance among junior athletes.

This article describes a categorical structure of perception of still-life painting. Analysis is done on the system of visual opposition elements in still-life. A still-life is considered a “perceptual statement about the world”, and a “visual aphorism”. The research is based on such methods as: semantic spaces constructing and their transformation at introduction of additional elements in still-lifes. It also gives full analysis of an interpretation of complex images and understanding of types of still-life as a visual hermeneutics.

Achievement motivation is a psychological category which implies a desire to achieve significant (powerful) results in certain sphere. According to the results of psychophysiological research people who are motivated for success are very active before they are instructed by the researcher which proves that they aimed at the perception of the referent situation and the intense level of expectations. One of the vital issues today is a problem how genes influence human behaviour. Thus on the basis of contemporary researches we can conclude that such influence is regulated by brain processes.

The problem of lie detection has a long history. Main achievements in this field are concerned with registration of peripheral nervous system indicators. Our experiment provides possibility for development of a new lie detection technology, based on neurophysiologic correlates of cognitive processes diagnostics that underlie deception. The experiments were conducted by “Audio-Visual Slider” software (by Medicom MTD), which performed synchronized stimuli presentation and electrophysiological recording.

Psychophysiological research into achromatic vision in humans and vertebrates displays that light intensity is coded by a two-dimensional “excitation vector”. The components of that vector are responses of brightness and darkness neurons (or, according to another classification, on- and off -neurons). It means that a current sensation of brightness is determined by a corresponding interrelation between activities of those two systems responding in opponent way to light onset and off set. The present research is devoted to testing of a hypothesis asserting that two-module organization of achromatic vision is a universal principle of brightness coding in a wide raw of animals including invertebrates. The paper represents certain results of registration and analysis of electroretinogram and total activity of the optical nerve in snail Helix lucorum to diffuse light fl ashes of different intensities. The obtained experimental data, along with the already existing reference data, allow us to assume that on- and off -systems may constitute the neural basis for brightness coding in the invertebrates. The peculiarity of on- and off -systems in vertebrates is that they are formed already at the photoreceptor level.

An important direction of human cognitive development is the development of abilities at activities in complex dynamical environments containing multiple interacting structures (Dorner, Frensch & Funke, Spector, Voss). Cognition of the interacting structures by experimentation is the main function of causal-experimental thought (Demetriou). Usually preoperational children are not considered to have well-expressed abilities for causal-experimental thought. In the paper I describe heuristic rules for design of didactic multivariable objects stimulating preschoolers’ combinatorial experimentation and causal-experimental thought, the objects designed, and several studies of the children’s cognitive activity (exploratory learning) aimed at the objects and revealing their abilities to combinatorial experimentation. Participants: 623 children of 3-7 years old. It has been shown that the children successfully explore the objects containing hidden mechanical, logical and mathematical relationships by using strategies of combinatorial experimentation of various levels of complexity.

The article is devoted to a number of urgent problems of mental and physical health of people who live in the global community. How we understand what is the world around us, what kind of society we live in and what are behavioural patterns and developmental features in the contemporary situation, and what the requirements of this society are. Changes in the modern child are influenced by an intense evolutionary self-development of modern man. Special attention should be paid to the development of science on the whole and psychological, psychophysiological, psychological and didactic branches in particular whose basis are stipulated in the textbooks and manuals of a qualitatively new generation.

In the article main parameters of any emergency situation that influence the psychological stress intensity are described. The most frequent consequences of emergency situations are discussed. The characteristic of psychological and psychosomatic reactions of the rescuers and secret service agents is provided. Professional and personal training of emergency service workers involved in work with victims of terrorist attacks and emergency situations is described. Attention is drawn to the the problem of interaction between emergency service workers and victims.

Organizational culture presents an interest for research and practice of social psychology. This article is intended to discuss the problem of managing the organizational structure on two levels that contain most topical problems: general methodological level and technological level. Organizational culture is a system with its distinct features that consists of units and sub-systems with their specific features. An organizational-culture system comprises several levels: leader’s personality level (as well as the personality level in general), level of executive team (as well as of a small group in general), level of organization in general (level of a large group).

Forming-up of the corporate identity is based on cognitive, affective and conative elements of corporate culture. The group as an entity choosing goals and values ensures a certain response to standards and values of corporate culture within the parameters of its social responsibility. Corporate security as security of community and cooperation acts as a form of organizational and ethical approach to developing socially responsible attitude of government and business.

The article gives an account of the empirical study results aimed at analyzing the degree of need for safety’s satisfaction. The findings demonstrate that the degree of need for safety as a basic personality want strongly depends on gender, agerelated and professional distinctions.

Displacement reaction is a universal behavioral reaction for stressful situation. Displacement behavior becomes more probable under uncontrollable stress. Very often human displacement behavior is revealed in different forms of risk behaviors. Many forms of risk behavior are deviant and asocial. The essay reviews the significance of uncontrollable social stress management in humans. Importance of studies on uncontrollable stress for prevention of displacement and risk behaviors is discussed.

The main directions of safety formation in communication strategies are connected with their adaptation to the conditions of social and psychological variability. Building up a communicative strategy is a versatile process, in which it is necessary to consider a wide spectrum of social and psychological parameters, especially topical in the modern period of social development. Forms of social interactions in schematic formats of contemporary social and economic revolution are reduced, social and functional potentials are depleted, mass society is further differentiating, the pace of historic changes is growing, all this determines the necessity to prepare changes in personality structures to the dynamics of social and psychological fluidity.

Security psychology is considered through social systemic search for reciprocal contiguity and mutual completion of existing advances of psychology and conceptual security understanding. The ability of systemic vision of security and its cognitive and practical specifics are demonstrated. The possibility to investigate safety psychology as social theoretical construct is suggested. Multi-aspect approach to security is substantiated. Methodological challenges of psychological security are discussed.

The purpose of the research was to study the patterns of using proactive coping and adherences to it’s different types in patients with chronic non-specific lung diseases. Participants of the study (N=180) were 30 to 60 years old. The Proactive Coping Inventory was used to assess the patients’ psychological status. According to the results of the study patients with chronic non-specific lung diseases use different types of proactive coping behavior while solving problematic and stressful situations. The research revealed that patients with bronchial asthma don’t have the skills of independent decision making, definition of objectives, considering of options in solving conflicts or other inconvenient situations sufficiently developed. Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are less satisfied with the emotional support that they receive from their relatives and closest people, it’s harder for them to reveal their feelings and emotions than for those who suffer from bronchial asthma and healthy ones. The results of the study may be useful in developing educational systems of proactive coping behavior skills for patients with chronic non-specific lung diseases for their health and well-being support.

Split Brain Syndrome as it is described in neuropsychology includes impairments of perceptual and motor activity, more specifically the impairments in coordination of motor responses in bimanual tasks as well as in perception, speech and space impairments. There’s little evidence about the specification of memory processes impairments in the corpus callosum (cc) pathology. The conducted experiment demonstrated that cc performs the function of distribution of energy between the brain hemispheres and suppress the subdominant in the present activity, forcing the interhemispherical asymmetry, suppressing the identical process in the subdominant hemisphere. CC also significantly influences the process of selectivity in involuntary memory and learning.