Lomonosov Psychology Journal, 2014, 3, 128.

An established link between the intellectual attention and the activity of frontal lobes in studies of E.D. Homskaya brings forward the application of special experimental psychological procedures. The latter are characterized by sensitized cognitive load and address both attention and memory. A modified version of the Stroop Task (Shilko R.S.) was employed in the present study of intellectual attention. 50 men ranging in age from 18 to 24 years with higher or incomplete higher education took part in the study. Among the participants there were 20 healthy subjects and 30 patients with schizophrenia in a paroxysmal form, developed in adolescence. The patients were under medical treatment in the Mental Health Research Center of RAMS. Comparison of intergroup results, based on the analysis of errors that were made by subjects in both groups, revealed the features of memory and attention, specific for the cohort of patients. Unlike the healthy subjects, schizophrenia patients revealed the types of errors which in accordance with the system of neuropsychological qualification of errors are typical for disturbances of functions of control and selectivity on different stages of activity and levels of attention regulation (A.R. Luria’s qualitative assessment scheme). There was ascertained a high sensitivity of the technique to study of the dysfunctions of the frontal lobes and identification of various parameters of intellectual attention.

The paper presents results of the neuropsychological assessment of processes involved in the maintenance of activation (Luria’s Unit I functions) in 64 firstgraders who demonstrated various levels of academic success. On the basis of this assessment, the children were divided into three groups: (i) the children without any deficit in the Unit I functions (CONTROL children), (ii) those predominantly showing slowness/fatigue (SLOW children), and (iii) those who can be considered as predominantly hyperactive-impulsive (HYPERACTIVE children). It is shown that, relative to controls, both SLOW and HYPERACTIVE children show reduced academic scores and the decrease of most indices that characterize functions of the Units II and III. The weakness of executive and visuo-spatial functions are predominantly observed in HYPERACTIVE children, whereas SLOW children usually show some deficit in processing of kinesthetic (proprioceptive) and audio-verbal information. Children with functional weakness of the Unit I functions show an overall reduction in performance and its speed in the computerized versions of the “DOTS” and “SCHULTE—GORBOV tables” tests. In HYPERACTIVE children, deficits are observed in the most difficult tasks (those probing mostly into planning and control functions), and their performance is the most unstable. In SLOW children, the performance rate is noticeably decreased for the moderate-to-difficult tasks. Overall, the data reported contribute to the understanding of the diversity of Unit I functions deficits and their relation to the learning difficulties experienced by children in the primary school.

The data is analyzed in the article about structural and neurochemical brain hemispheric asymmetry, which, together with results of neuropsychological investigations, allow considering in a new way the problem of realization of psychic events. Modern investigations of cellar and molecular processes in neural system show, that the endogenous neural activity and the ways of neural self-organization are in many respects defined by the composition of extracellar environment. The complication of brain during phylogenies was accompanied by increasing asymmetry of neural system at the same time the biological prerequisites for differentiation of general “meanings” and one’s personal “sense” of the acquired experience were forming. The asymmetric mediation of psychic events by cellar and neurohumoral components of brain processing provided the opportunity for appearing language and distinct subjective experiences in human.