Articles

Background. The problem of polysemy has attracted scholars’ attention since antiq­uity and interest in the phenomenon never lessens. A substantial number of works have been published on the cognitive nature of meaning ambiguity. Despite a new emphasis on the cognitive aspects of polysemy, little has been done towards an inte­grated approach to the study of this linguistic phenomenon.

Objective and Method. This work’s objective was to contribute to an integrated interdisciplinary theory of polysemy. To this end, we explored the cognitive founda­tion of meaning using empirical and theoretical research methods, but mostly relying on semiotic analysis of texts central to the humanities. In particular, we analyzed the dichotomy of conscious vs. unconscious processing in the acquisition and use of polysemy. For the identification of cognitive patterns of polysemy development in ontogenesis, we used probabilistic conceptual modeling.

Results. The acquisition of meaning is a conscious process: it is a conscious interaction of the speaker with an interlocutor and their common social environ­ment. On the other hand, meanings are unconscious unless a connection between the phonological, acoustic form and the concept is established. Correspondingly, polysemy is conscious when a new meaning is formed in the course of social inter­action. However, polysemy, as an inherent language phenomenon, remains uncon­scious for native speakers, who are unaware of its presence provided they are not involved in some form of intentional language games (pun, zeugma or intended ambiguity).

Conclusion. The present approach to the analysis of meaning ambiguity seems to be a productive endeavor. Further research into polysemy has to be based on a range of additional types of evidence, including those obtained by methods of cogni­tive neuroscience.

Background. Ideas about relationships between “I”, egocentric spatial orientation and the sense of bodily “Self ” date back to work by classics of philosophy and psychology. Cognitive neuroscience has provided knowledge about brain areas involved in self-ref­erential processing, such as the rostral prefrontal, temporal and parietal cortices, often active as part of the default mode network (DMN).

Objective and Method. Little is known about the contribution of inferior parietal areas to self-referential processing. Therefore, we collected observations of everyday be­havior, social communication and problem solving in patients with brain lesions local­ized either in the left inferior parietal cortex (LIPC group, n = 45) or the right inferior parietal cortex (RIPC group, n = 58).

Results. A key characteristic of the LIPC group was an overestimation of task com­plexity. This led to a prolonged phase of redundant and disruptive contemplations pre­ceding task solution. In the RIPC group, we observed disorders in reflective control and voluntary regulation of behavior. Abilities for experiencing emotions, understanding mental states, and social communication were to a great extent lost. Results are inter­preted within a multilevel framework of cognitive-affective organization (velichkovsky, 2002). In particular, we highlight the role of right-hemisphere mechanisms in self-refer­ential cognition, emotional and corporeal awareness. This is consistent with recent data on a profound asymmetry in connectivity of left and right hippocampi within the DMN (Ushakov et al., 2016)

Conclusion. It seems that the center of egocentric spatial representation plays a spe­cial role in accessing self-related data. Normally, the right hippocampus provides a holis­tic representation of surrounding and, thus, an easy-to-find gateway into much of what we used to call “subjective experience”. This heuristics becomes misleading in the case of right-sided brain lesions.

Since the publication of its first issue in 2008, Psychology in Russia: State of the Art had served as a flagship journal for the Russian Psychological Society and has played an important and unique role for the field of psychology in Russia. And with the psychological science rapidly becoming increasingly international, integrated and multidisciplinary, the journal today enjoys a wide international readership and is becoming a source of scholarship in psychology worldwide.

This year marks the transition of Psychology in Russia: State of the Art from annual to quarterly publication to encourage exploration, development and validation of new scholarly discoveries in the field. This required our editorial team to streamline the journal’s review and publication processes to meet the challenge and see our journal evolve as it continues to grow in size and influence.

The results of the field research of intergroup attitudes in Southern Russia (N=723) demonstrated that the relationships of the valence and uncertainty of ethnic identity, perceived discrimination and the level of religious identity with intergroup attitudes depend on a group status (majority-minority) and the type of settlement (dense - sparse). The perceived discrimination predicts the intolerance of intergroup attitudes among the majority group members whereas, the valence and uncertainty of ethnic identity - among the minorities members. The salience of ethnic identity and high level of religious identity predict intolerant attitudes among migrants with the dense way of settlement, the valence of identity and perceived discrimination predict intolerant attitudes among the migrants with the sparse type of settlement. The willingness to distinguish between people by religion provides the maintenance of their group boundaries and identity in multicultural regions of Russia. The growth of uncertainty of ethnic identity, decrease of perceived discrimination and the level of religious identity as well as general ethnic tolerance provide better adaptation of migrants in multicultural regions of Russia.

Data about the victims of social violence in different cultures and historical epochs are provided by wars, political repressions, and everyday violence. Rough calculations demonstrate that while demographic densities and the technical capacity for mutual destruction have increased throughout the millennia, the violent death rate - the quantity of deliberate killings per capita per time unit - has been decreasing. The resulting downward trend appears highly non-linear, dramatic, and mediated by man-made catastrophes, but still, in the long term, progressive. Obviously, some perfecting mechanism of cultural aggression-retention has compensated for technological developments; among those mechanisms was economic development. This issue is explored using the pattern of techno-humanitarian balance.

The article is focused on the history of psychology from a perspective of its paradigm shifts. Based on the transspective analysis, the author identifies the grounds for progressive development of the psychological science as an open self-organizing theoretical system. The transspective analysis is also considered a methodological tool for studying self-organizing psychological systems. It is asserted that modern psychology is moving toward a post-non-classical paradigm within the framework of which psyche and consciousness acquire a new explanation.

Processing of sensory stimuli is controlled by the top-down influences that shape oscillations in the synchrony form revealed in the EEG. However, little is known about the nature of these influences. The present study investigated the contribution of "evoked oscillations" in the perception of auditory stimuli during passive and active attention from the position of pacemaker hypothesis on the origin of gamma rhythm. To analyze the problem, the author suggests a special method based on the narrow frequency filtering event-related potentials, localization of dipole sources of gamma oscillations over the structural MRI slices. Computation of equivalent dipoles for the discrete frequencies demonstrates interaction between prefrontal and auditory cortex during active attention to auditory stimuli. The obtained results are compatible with the pacemaker hypothesis.

Intracellular research of land snail Helix lucorum L. eye demonstrates two types of visual cells responding to flashes of white light by slow sustained depolarization (D-type) and by slow sustained hyperpolarization (H-type), respectively. Peaks of spectral sensitivity of both cell types at 465-500 nm coincide with peak of spectral sensitivity of photopigment "rhodopsin". The two-channel vector model of achromatic vision of snail is proposed. According to the model, responses of D- and H-cells constitute two-dimensional 'excitation vector' of constant length, the direction of which is the code of light intensity. The two-dimensional vector model of light encoding in snails' eye is analogous with achromatic vision models of achromatic vision in vertebrates based on psychophysical and neurophysiological data in fish, rabbit, monkey and human. So, intracellular data in snail taken together with data on vertebrate animals testify in favor of the hypothesis that 2-dimensioanl module of "bright" and "dark" cells is the universal opponent mechanism of "vector encoding" of light intensity in neuronal nets for vision.

At the current stage the history of researching creativity appears to have drawn a curve which agrees with the methodological conceptions of L.S. Vigotsky. His idea, that of a psychology which intends to study phenomena in their complexity, should replace the methods of dividing into elementary components (atoms) by methods which single out essential non-elemental units, and should make obvious the logic of understanding creative abilities, as it historically developed in the 19lh and 20lh centuries.

The article describes various studies on awareness - unawareness processes conducted at the department of General psychology at St.-Petersburg State University, Russia. The topic under discussion is the aftereffect of the negative choice, which was discovered by the author. This phenomenon is related to some other well-known psychological phenomena. The article discusses the meaning of this phenomenon (the aftereffect of the negative choice) for the research program in the psychology of consciousness.

The article reveals the subject-matter of the systemacity (consistency) principle in psychology and some forms of its realization. Basic statements of the original version of the system approach by major Russian psychologist and science institutor Boris F. Lomov are considered. The state and the tendencies of development of system approach in the modern period are discussed.

The paper presents analysis of principles, treatments and ways of using phenomenology in psychology. Six different ways of using phenomenological method in psychology are discerned: as

(1) a method of clarifying of phenomena of consciousness and concepts,
(2) a way of differentiation, description and analysis of psychopathological phenomena,
(3) a way of understanding and penetration to the living world of a person,
(4) a form of subjective self-reports of participants,
(5) a method of psychotherapeutic work with experience,
(6) a qualitative research strategy in academic psychology.

The approach to phenomenology as a special style of research and practice, which implies the intuitive, reflective, unprejudiced, descriptive, detailed approach to phenomena, is developed.

Russian psychology which had been cut off from the world science for the greater part of the 20th century is now facing a challenge to join the international mainstream. To facilitate the integration of Russian psychology into the international mainstream, a certain hermeneutics is needed, applied to the explicit methodology and terminology Russian scientists used, as well as to the system of implicit beliefs and assumptions concerning human nature "embedded" into the Russian psychology. The latter is compared to its counterparts in major Western psychological theories.

Today, the media are often blamed for having a harmful influence on the moral, psychological, psychosexual, and social development of people. Indignant mothers, polemicists from politics and social fields, spiritual leaders, psychologists, and even researchers of the media attribute to the mass media truly horrific effects, such as the demoralization, perversion, and spiritual impoverishment of their audiences. The most blamed medium is television. Nowadays, television is considered to be the root of evil. The author tries to understand how justified such reproaches to the media are.

This article examines the influence of the mass media and in particular television on the development of the values of pluralism and cultural diversity in children. The role of television is quite important in forming positive attitudes toward cultural, ethnic, and other groups and in inculcating an adequate perception of social reality and tolerant, multicultural awareness. The article also analyzes the functions and principles of public broadcasting, among which diversity of programming is one of the most significant.

The feminization of journalism, a process taking place in numerous countries worldwide, has been advancing at a much higher rate in Russia than elsewhere. This trend is based on both global and specifically Russian factors. The gradual migration of journalism from being a typically male profession to being a predominantly female one brings about a number of inner transformations and creates a certain inner psychological climate. To fully understand these changes, researchers should set new goals for their studies based on an analysis of gender transformations in journalism and on investigations of possible problems and conflicts entailed in the process.

The mass media have become one of the crucial institutions of modern society; it is hard to overestimate their role in the formation of people’s beliefs, values, and physiological characteristics. The media industries are now an integral part of the leisure and entertainment industries. With free time becoming a key economic resource of society, the individual lives and psychological well-being of people are significantly influenced by the processes of mass communication and by media companies; this level of influence results in the emergence of a new human being—homo mediatis.

The article aims to demonstrate advances in methodological means suggested by Vygotsky’s cultural-historical concept in association with a theoretical model of a Person-centered diagnosis and practical use of the construct for clinical psychology and medicine. This, to a greater extent, arises from the fact that the cultural-historical concept (due to its humanistic nature and epistemological content) is closely related to the person-centered integrative approach. But for all that the concept corresponds to the ideals of postnonclassical model of scientific rationality with a number of ‘key’ features. Above all it manifests its “methodological maturity” to cope with open self-developing systems, which is most essential at the modern stage of scientific knowledge.

The work gives consideration to ‘defining pillars’ of Person-centered approach in modern medicine, to humanistic traditions of the Russian clinical school, and high prospects in diagnostics of such mental constructs as “subjective pattern of disease” and “social situation of personal development in disease” - within the context of person-centered integrative diagnosis.

This article discusses the need for implementation a cross-cultural study of subjective pattern of disease and its correlation with a particular “social situation of personality development under disease conditions”. It aims at development and substantiation of the model of person-centered integrative approach, enhancement of its diagnostic scope and, consequently, improvement of the model of person-centered care in modern psychiatry and medicine.

Over the last decade, the problem of young people's health has been among the most important and complicated ones for Russian society; these problems affect not only young children but also students in higher education institutions. The low level of physical and psychological health of young people has become an alarming characteristic of the demographic situation in modern Russia.

This study was carried out at the State University of St. Petersburg, which is one of the largest higher education institutions in Russia. The university consists of many academic departments, and thus it is possible to study the health-related behavior of students with different professional backgrounds.

The results show that drug use among students in Russia still remains relatively rare and episodic; in most cases, students use "light" drugs and thus have both slow rates of developing an addiction and an alternative but successful socialization in modern youth subculture. Such drugs are also not generally associated with significant health risks.

Research was carried out to explore coping strategies in cancer patients. In all, 70 women with breast cancer were studied: 35 of them had visible postsurgery deformity, and 35 did not have visible postsurgery deformity. The purpose of the research was to uncover their preferences for using various strategies and resources to cope with their illness. The results showed that both groups of women had a special set of strategies for coping with stress. The women with visible postsurgery deformity made significantly less use of resources for coping with their illness than did the subgroup of women without visible postsurgery deformity.