Articles

Optimal, or flow experience is a psychological construct introduced by M. Csik-szentmihalyi; it refers to intrinsic motivation when an activity is worth doing for its own sake and denotes productive work with high concentration on the task, distinct objectives and high level of satisfaction, positive feelings such as enjoyment, balance between the available skills and the task challenges, immediate feedback, as well as temporary loss of self-consciousness and distorted sense of time. This construct is being intensely used in numerous environments connected with the use of information technologies, including specific ones such as Internet addiction. The latter context is argued to be incorrect, since addiction means a negative feeling while flow is positive. Numerous examples follow distinguishing online gamers' repetitive behaviors referring to flow experience from those which refer to addictive behavior.

This article deals with researches on the cognitive component of interpersonal cog­nition and studies a possibility of improving it during teachers' education. Mistakes people make while estimating one another are analyzed on the basis of empirical researches. The author suggests a model describing main interpersonal cognition principles that is capable of minimizing such mistakes. The author describes the researches conducted under her supervision, in which the strategies based on the interpersonal cognition principles were studied. It has been shown that teachers using a model set of the interpersonal cognition principles are much better at es­timating children's personality characteristics, than those who are unable to use them. The author also presents the method called The Development of the Strate­gies of Interpersonal Cognition, and considers forms and conditions of its usage in education of future teachers.

The present paper reveals basic trends of psychological studies in media com­munications conducted in Russia, in particular, at Lomonosov MSU.The principal researchers, engaged in the field, are introduced: A.A. Leontiev, N.N. Bogomolova, O.T. Melnikova, L.V. Matveeva.The model of human interaction with media space, suggested by LV. Matveeva, is considered in detail. The paper presents principal results of investigation, undertaken on the basis of the present model, and focused on personality self-expression within telecommunication, as well as characteris­tic features of telecommunicator and image regulation of mediated intercourse. There also presented some trends in development of media psychology in pres­ent day research: a study of reception and recognition of emotions in media com­munication; the problem of informational-psychological security of spectator; the image of Russia offered by mass media.

The paper is devoted to consideration of self-regulation training that can be used in order to prevent a development of negative human functional states (HFS) in work environment. According to the well-developed in Russian work and organizational psychology traditions the effects of practical implementation of various self-regulation methods on job efficiency and worker's well-being are analyzed. The positive patterns of changes in HFS syndromes taken place as a result of prolonged courses of self-regulation training are described. It is shown that a successful acquisition of self-regulation skills strongly depends on (1) specificity of job content and (2) individual sensitivity to various relaxation techniques. These findings are useful for enhancing the quality of work-site stress management and health promotion programs.

The psychological basis of creative thinking training as a means of development of conflict competence of a professional includes: in the first place, the knowledge of psychological nature of creative thinking of a professional; in the second place, recognition of above situational thinking as a leading quality in the structure of creative professional thinking; consideration of above situational thinking in the context of development of conflict competence of a professional, in the third place. In order to develop conflict competence, it is necessary to learn to get above the level of momentary requirements of a situation, to detect above situational problems, to set the goals, excessive from the point of view of the initial task. Pro­fessionals, thinking in terms of above situation, while analyzing a conflict situation, start to realize and actualize their own resources, which facilitates a creative way in problems resolving. It is the detection of above situational problems that forms the basis for creative thinking and is characterized by a set of key personal qualities necessary for his self-transformation as an agent.

Management as a form of cognition implies gaining new experience and knowledge, particularly about oneself. Traditionally, the psychology of social cognition distinguishes between an object and a subject of cognition (i.e. the one who cognizes). The subject of cognition can represent both an individual and a social group. As consciousness and mentality of an individual changes in modern society, essential topics of social cognitive psychology assume new importance: society components are becoming inter-cognitive. There is a change in the structure of management relations within the management system that includes aims and functions, as well as the subject and object of management.

This paper deals with the development and main features of the cultural-historical approach in neuropsychology. A three step model of the evolution of Russian neuropsychology is proposed. The social and subjective features of disturbances in the pattern of mental functions and their dynamics in children and adults are discussed. The problems of the internal representation of defects, of the quality of life of patients and of their caregivers prove to be of fundamental value for contemporary neuropsychological investigations.

Gene-environment correlations have been studied in behavior genetics since the beginning of the 1980s, including genetic effect on the perceived family environment; however, the majority of studies have been based on retrospective self-reports. The current study is meant to analyze the sources of variance (complementary genetic factors, shared and non-shared environmental variance) in perceived family environment with Russian adolescent twins. Perception of family environment was measured with the Russian version of Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1981). The structural equation model in "Mx"(Neale, Boker, Xie, & Maes, 2004) was employed to estimate the influence of genetic and environmental factors on adolescents' self-reports. The environmental variance components are prevalent for most FES scales (6 of 10). The shared environment was significant for 3 primary grades and the Organization factor, the complementary genetic variance was revealed for 2 primary grades and the Expressiveness-Control super-order factor. These results are generally consistent with previously reported moderate heritability of FES scales, although the heritabilities for the Conflict scale and the Structure super-order factor appear to be relatively high. The gene-environment correlation might be a possible explanation for these findings.

This article concerns studies devoted to the analysis of stereotypes of women's behavior using a method of plural identification. This method has developed within the general psychosemantic approach and allows to study not only well realized social and mental representations, but those deep and implicit, too. The article describes three experiments. All of them are cross-cultural. In the first and the second experiments attitudes of Russian and Azerbaijan respondents were compared. The third experiment is focused on comparing the feedback received from Russian and US samples. It has been shown that cultural influence is more important than gender influence when we deal with attitudes towards female behavior and life scenarios. That means that positions of men and women of the same culture have more in common than responses pf women or men from different cultures. The method permits to conduct cross-cultural researches into different (subcultures both in one country or in different countries.

This research is devoted to the investigation of the role of conscious self-regulation in human development and activity. The concept of conscious self-regulation of a subject's voluntary activity and the history of its research conducted in Psychological Institute RAE are discussed. The results of the research dedicated to the typology of individual styles of self-regulation and their relationship with educational and professional activity effectiveness are presented. Personal dispositions have specific influence on the individual peculiarities of regulatory profile. It is concluded that the integrated system of individual self-regulation includes dynamic and content aspects of a personality, its conscious and subconscious structures for development and achievement of goals

In the paper an attempt is made to justify the importance of geometrical language (especially metric space models) for the description of visual perception processing. The tradition to use geometry for the description of psychophysiological processes goes back to a Newtonian color circle. At present there are many examples of such models, as well as of examples from other areas of mathematics. However, we want to justify a position, that geometrical language is not simply one of formal languages used for the description of visual perception phenomena. We'll try to represent it as the approach, which includes both the formal description of psychological phenomena and neurophysiological mechanisms, as well as experimental techniques of research into these phenomena and mechanisms.

The new method of microstructure analysis of oscillatory brain activity was pro­posed for studying the structure and dynamics of working memory. Mapping local network activity according to dipole localization of frequency-selective gamma and beta generators supports the leading role of frontal areas in processes of working memory. The retention of information during the delay interval is presented by joint activity of frequency-selective gamma and beta generators which provide the integration of frontal areas, associative, visual cortex and cerebellum. The joint activity of the gamma- and beta-generators has a wave-like character and is modulated by low-frequency wave activity.

The aim of this study was to investigate holistic / feature processing for encod­ing face expressions employing the chimeric face technique. In the course of our experiment we tested the recognition accuracy of universal and "chimeric" countenance. As the study has revealed there was a considerable difference between distributions of subject responses depending on the localization of expression features (top/ bottom parts of the face). For chimeric face identification accuracy substantially decreased, there were considerable variations in the naming of face expression and the names assigned were hardly dictated by distinguishing features. The changes in recognition of facial expressions may be accounted for by disarrangement in holistic processing of expression encoding.

In the present paper we suggest that people experience history from four perspectives: Participant, Witness, Contemporary and Successor. These perspectives differ in the proportion of experience, knowledge and personal meaning that is available. We empirically demonstrated greater malleability of memories about terrorist attacks that were experienced as a Witness than as a Contemporary. We also review research on the extent to which people spontaneously use historical events as a reference for dating personal memories. In our Moscow sample (N = 476), historical references were present in 5% of people. We found that 17% of participants listed historical memories in their life stories, as indicated by where they placed events along a Life Line. There was a tendency to balance negative historical experience with positive events from the Contemporary perspective (Gagarin'61, Olympic Games'80). Older participants included historical memories in their Life Lines more often than younger participants did, while the majority of historical memories referred to the age before 29. Participants recollected historical memories only from periods in their past that fell within what is called the "reminiscence bump" - a lifetime period that covers the age interval between 18-28 years. The proportion of historical content in individual autobiographical memory is deter­mined by: 1) objective history; 2) experiencing historically transitional events in youth; 3) being older than the "reminiscence bump" period and 4) having at least a decade time distance toward historical event

The present paper describes two studies that investigated incremental predictive value of tolerance and intolerance for uncertainty in predicting creativity. The first study shows significant positive incremental predictive power of tolerance for uncertainty over general intelligence in predicting creativity. The second study reveals a negative relationship between intolerance for uncertainty and creativity with fluid intelligence scores being already accounted for. Overall, tolerance for uncertainty promotes creativity, whereas intolerance for uncertainty impedes it, demonstrating that creativity draws on both intellectual potential and processes of uncertainty acceptance.

The author views dialectic cognition as an integral and unique process, which is based on dialectical logic - the logic of operating opposites. The development of this logic takes place during the preschool years through transformation of contradictory situations. The transformation process is carried out by dialectical cognitive actions.

This article reports on the results of development of human mental abilities measurement method based on the stated theoretical positions. Such positions are represented by the following: the thesis formulated by M.I. Sechenov that a thought is generated in the process of establishing a connection between the object and its properties; the definition of thin king given by S.L.Rubinstein who wrote that in the process of solving a problem the object manifests its new properties and qualities, it shows a new side, a new content is "bailed out" of it, as well as the thesis about mental development of abilities formulated by V.D. Shadrikov (2007).

This article stresses the social importance of the problem of giftedness and in this connection the necessity to clarify this concept scientifically. The history of this problem reveals the origins of reduction of the concept and the wide-spread notion of giftedness as "intelligence level above average. "There are two reasons of it: 1) Galton's components of giftedness were put into a complex; 2) there were no measuring techniques of this complex. The unit of the analysis of giftedness was formed after Galton's notion of giftedness as comprised of components was supplemented with the method of measurement -"systematic observation"- and understood as an ability to generate activity at one's own initiative. Then it became possible to realize Galton's concept of giftedness as a manifestation of mind and character.

The article presents basic trends and prospects of development of neurosciences which study the problems of brain dysfunctions, thinking, memory, perception, and data processing It considers the questions raised by the research of brain elasticity of an adult person, the problem of individual consciousness, decoding of mechanisms of thinking, new trends in cross-cultural of studies.. The attention is focused on the important interdisciplinary researches in the field of studying stress / distress and various mental and psychosomatic frustrations which are caused by them.

In Vygotsky's words, Marxist psychology proceeds along the path of American behaviorism only to a certain point (1926). I suppose Vygotsky was mistaken. Behaviorism of his time was as immature as Marxist psychology, and much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Contemporary behaviorology is compatible with dialectical materialism. Here I will particularly examine three aspects. Firstly, materialistic interpretation of causality is crucial for both of them. Secondly, cause and consequence are dialectically related in selection by consequences, so it is in fact a dialectical model of behavior determination. Thirdly, laws of dialectics are applicable to behaviorology.