Editorial

Zinchenko, Yu. P. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Federal Scientific Center of Psychological and Interdisciplinary Research, Moscow, Russia

Special section of the third issue of the 6th volume Psychology in Russia: State of the Art presents the papers of the workshop and faculty meeting of the Parmenides Foundation — international scientific community for multi-disciplinary cognitive research building bridges between natural, computer sciences and humanities. The 10th Sino-German Workshop in the Neurosciences and Psychology with 80 participants from 15 countries, held in Hamburg, Germany (1–4 September 2013), was dedicated to the general topic of neglected questions in the field.

The section opens with “Unasked questions and unused answers in psychology” — an outlook of the most prominent methodological issues made up of comments by the international group of researchers. It discusses the “universal” conceptual problems — classification of functions, unified methodological approaches, explanation of the psychological phenomenon — in certain contexts such as use of single cases in cognitive research, misunderstanding the “Occam’s razor” principle, the nature of time, language, culture as research variables.

The other articles in the section provide the results of research implementing magnetic resonance, morphometric analysis, different methods for registration of brain electric activity as well as psychosemantic methods. The methods used allowed to gain some insights into the issues of working memory (Stanislav A. Kozlovskiy, Maria M. Pyasik, Aleksander V. Vartanov, Evgenia Yu. Nikonova), creativity (Pavel N. Ermakov, Oxana S. Saakyan), functional states (Vladimir V. Galatenko, Evgeniy D. Livshitz, Alexander M. Chernorizov, Yury P. Zinchenko, Alexey V. Galatenko, Vladimir M. Staroverov, Sergey A. Isaychev, Vyacheslav V. Lebedev, Galina Ya. Menshikova, Alexey N. Gusev, Ekaterina M. Lobacheva, Rozaliya F. Gabidullina, Vladimir E. Podol’skii, Victor A. Sadovnichy), illusions perception (Galina Ya. Menshikova), understanding of polysemous words (Vera I. Zabotkina, Elena Boyarskaya) and psychophysiological mechanisms of mental stress reactions in hypertension (Yu. P. Zinchenko, Elena I. Pervichko, Olga D. Ostroumova). Janna M. Glozman and Pavel Krukow discuss new neuropsychological theory of the social brain and its relationship to Luria’s and Vygotsky’s understanding of a human as a social and biological unity.

The idea of an individuum as a multi-layered level of a body-mind union is further elaborated in the articles “Proprioception as a basis for individual differences” by Ludmila N. Liutsko and “Character and temperamental determinants of prosodic parameters of natural speech” by Anna S. Silnitskaya and Alexey N. Gusev in Psychology of Perception section. Alla K. Bolotova and Milana R. Hachaturova describe the role of time perspective in coping behavior; their article provides results, fruitful for counseling and training practice.

Work and Organizational Psychology section also deals with highly relevant practical issues, especially important in a modern megalopolis. Traffic psychology is still an emerging sphere of research in Russia while there is a wide field of its application. Alexander I. Dontsov and Alexandra I. Kabalevskaya investigated gender stereotypes among road users. The article “Determinants of professional distortion development in medical personnel, teachers and psychologists, working in the industrial disaster zone” by the group of researchers headed by Anna B. Leonova deals with the consequences of the most psychologically hazardous events and suggests prevention strategies for professional burnout and distortion. Andrey V. Sidorenkov and Irina I. Sidorenkova describe the model of trust in work groups.