Articles

In the article are given the contents and the origins of terms «new religious movement», «brainwashing» and «mind control». There are also described the stages by which mind control is taken place in groups which aim is manipulating human brain (according to E. Schein and R.J. Lifton).

The psychological aspects of interdisciplinary problems of human—environment interactions are discussed in the paper. increase of interest to the problem is justified resulting also from the intensification of global environmental problems humanity is facing and also from the needs of psychological maintenance of the concept of «Sustainable Development». Trends in western psychology combined by the common scientific problem of human-environment interaction having the substantive and methodological crossing are examined, among them: «Ecological psychology», «Ecopsychology», «Environmental psychology» and «Psychology of Sustainable Development». Multiple meanings of «ecology» notion widely used in modern psychological discourse are discussed. it is alleged that matches the context of foreign and russian studies will contribute to the more active insertion of psychologists in the reality of human interaction with the environment

Article presents results of the research carried out by the author on the basis of student’s works, executed within the special course “The psychology of personality self-determination” at faculty of psychology of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. The consistant interest to professional activity became a subject of the given research. The methods of building up the professional self-consciousness is proposed.

User satisfaction is one of the key characteristics of software products including the web-sites’ quality. An absence of generally accepted instruments for evaluation of the user satisfaction creates a significant impediment for empirical studies on usability of software products. In the paper there are discussed the results of elaboration of a new psychodiagnostic tool that can be used for these purposes. It is presented in the form of a standardized questionnaire with well-balanced content, high internal consistency and differential sensitivity. The instrument provides a multidimensional evaluation of user satisfaction as a way for ergonomic redesign of a web-site interface.

This article deals with researches of the cognitive component of interpersonalcognition, and it also studies a possibility of improving it during the process of teachers’education. On the basis of numeral researches data the author describes mistakes, peoplemake estimating one another, and, as a result, she offers the model of interpersonalcognition strategies, allowing minimizing them. The author describes the researches,carried out under her leadership, showing that teachers, who use these strategies,estimate children’s personality feathers much better, than their colleagues, who are notable to use them. The author also presents the method “Improvement of the Strategiesof Interpersonal Cognition”, and analyzes forms and conditions of its usage in theprocess of teachers’ education.

In article are described main results of the study of creative problem-solving tasks (CPS) with sudden insights for various age-specific periods. A classification of testing tasks was developed referencing thinking methods leading to creative solutions such as addition, modification, unification and transformation. This set of creative problem-solving tasks was offered to 7 groups of 200 children age 3 to 15 and 50 adults. Early insights were found in 4-year olds’ work on very simple tasks. Data indicate that the dynamics of CPS skills development varied by the age cohort. 

The meaning of “factor” in the works of A.R. Luria is analyzes. Relations of this concept and fundamental theoretical problems of neuropsychology are defines. On the basis of these relations is reconstructed for the most organic for A.R. Luria's texts interpretation of the concept “factor”.

The investigation of consecutive actions of various complexities has led to observation of the effect of functional transformation of cognitive stages of these actions and analysis of its selective properties. The merging of cognitive components and its respective functions occurs when it guarantees the most effective performance in the solution of the overall task. The effect of functional transformation is a fundamental explanatory principle of construction of continuous activity consisted of discrete actions and submitted to the completion of the final task.

The paper is devoted to consideration of the main research domains on the problems of human reliability and stress management that recently developed in the Laboratory of work psychology (Faculty of Psychology, Moscow State University). There are discussed a new paradigm for the structural analysis of worker’s functional states and a hierarchical model of occupational stress elaborated in the framework of Leontiev’s activity theory. The appropriate set of criteria and methods for evaluation of personnel mental health and efficiency of organizational interactions were produced as a basis for creating goal-oriented stress management technologies, i.e. «Personal diagnostic and prevention of stress», «Assessment of the individual level of stress-resistance», «Self-regulation training and restoration program». They were carried out as the complex systems that provide a support in the work of psychologists in practice and demonstrate an efficient way of integrating the new conceptual approaches to the modern issues in the field of work, organizational and health psychology.

The paper presents analysis of meditation as a form of achievement of altered state of consciousness by concentration of attention and «calming of mind». Buddhist psychopractices and contemporary psychotherapy are compared in the frame of work with imagination. The authors analyze Buddhist Tantric meditation on images of spiritual creatures, which allows the transformation of personal traits in probationer. It is argued that under the conditions of meditation the process of change of categorization takes place, right up to complete stoppage of categorization in nirvana.

To the 90th anniversary of Zoya Alexeevna Reshetova.

In our study we compared structures of changes in quality of life in caregivers of patients with Parkinson’s disease at the early and advanced stages. The perception of patients by their relatives is revealed through a content analysis of their descriptions of patients. We found out 2 factors that influence the caregiver’s adaptation: 1) severity of patient’s motor and cognitive disturbances, and 2) caregiver’s psychological problems (bad mood, difficulties in family communication and interaction).

The article describes verification of a test diagnostics method that focuses on understanding of human biology, specifically the procedure and the results of verification. The study includes testing of 168 high school students and validation of the test by 55 experts. The results of the study indicate that the test can be recommended to diagnose how well high school students understand human biology. The difference in experts’ opinion regarding interpretation of the test questions has been analyzed.

Discrimination of colors and brightness was studied with instrumental learning paradigm in monkeys (Macaque rhesus) and fish (Carpio Cyprinus L.). The confusion matrices composed of percentage of instrumental responses were treated by principal components analysis. The spherical structure of perceptual color and brightness spaces revealed in both animals was similar to those in humans with normal color vision. In concordance with spherical model the eigenvectors constituting these spaces correspond to neuronal channels that encode differences between stimuli in color and brightness.

Psychoanalysis presents unique empirical material for the research of the dynamics of personality reflection in altered states of consciousness and its impact on different aspects of vital activity of the personality. it was shown that as altered states of consciousness become deeper during the psychoanalytical process the reflexive processes of a personality enhance, become more active and change qualitatively, which is expressed in particular in the formation of the active «reflexive i».