Relevance. The musical activity of a professional pianist has been little studied by objective methods. For most musicians, the task of sight-reading causes a difficulty in both academic and professional activities. Understanding the visual-motor mechanisms and cognitive processes involved in the implementation of sight-reading can help musical pedagogical practice. There are few sight-reading studies and most of them were conducted in conditions far from the real ones. This work is interdisciplinary that involved the interests of musical pedagogy, psychology and physiology.

Objective. On the base of the cognitive task of sight-reading music in conditions close to reality to explore the interaction of visual-motor parameters and their relationship with the parameters of the working memory.

Methods. 55 subjects aged 18–25 years (30 pianists and 25 non-pianists) were tested using the OS and N-back method to determine individual parameters of the working memory, as well as to determine the time of a complex visual-motor response. Eye tracking method was utilized for eye movement recording when the pianists sight read sheet of notes.

Results.The visual-motor performance parameters (eye hand span, errors and regressions) differ significantly at sight-reading musical fragments of varying complexity. Compared with the literature data we obtained opposite results for value of the eye hand span depending on the complexity of the musical text. We revealed correlations between the visual-motor parameters and the working memory parameters as well as their dependence on the quality of performance.

Conclusion. Objectively recorded visual-motor parameters complexly interact with each other. The mastery of sight-reading music of professional pianists closely related with individual parameters of the working memory.

Relevance. The study of human functional states within the structural-functional approach is an important development in work psychology. As work becomes more intensive and cognitive, the study of mental fatigue becomes more important.

Objective. To validate cognitive tests for the assessment of mental fatigue cognitive effects, and to replicate cognitive effects of fatigue observed within the structural-functional approach.

Methodology. 27 subjects (18 male), engineers in a high-tech engineering firm, and took part in the study conducted over a working day in the morning and in the evening. Mental fatigue was assessed with a questionnaire. The cognitive tests included a test of attention switching, a test for working memory, and the Sternberg’s short-term memory search task.

Results. A reduction in attention switching and memory search efficiency was found. These results in a good concordance with previous results and indicate a reduction in the availability of top-down cognitive control resources. Evidence was found for transition towards sequential self-terminating memory search strategy under mental fatigue. No reduced working memory was found, which may be related to the meta-cognitive regulation of functional states.

Conclusions. Mental fatigue is associated with a reduction in the control of attention and short-term memory, related to the depletion of cognitive control resources. Individual cognitive reactions to fatigue are important. Future developments of the structural-functional approach may include the development of new diagnostics tools, the usage of cognitive modeling, the orientation to the analysis of the individual differences, and the integration of the structural-functional approach with resource approaches to cognition.

The article presents the results of experimental study that found the effects of attention and working memory on the change blindness phenomenon manifestation. In “flicker” paradigm 93 participants solved the task of change detection in two consistently presenting images. The participants was divided into several groups by the magnitudes of concentration and allocation of attention, estimated using Bourdon’s correction test, as well as on the accuracy and time of identification of the target stimulus in the DMS working memory test. Found a positive influence of the concentration and allocation of attention on the search changes duration. The effects of working memory indexes were different: improving the accuracy of identification of the target stimulus was associated with an increase in the search time but in contrast the speed of identification positive effects on the search changes duration. The results allow to suppose that the specific role of attention and memory resources in the change blindness.

Whenever the reverse order of delayed execution of sequence of movements set by a visual template is required, the question arises as to how the sequence representation is stored in working memory (WM). One option is to first reverse the order of movements and then retain the result in WM. The other option is to retain the original order of elements and change it immediately before or during the sequence execution. In order to verify which of the two options takes place we conducted an experiment in which 14 adult (20—30 years old) subjects were asked to memorize the route of visual cursor moving along the invisible polygonal chains and after a given delay to reproduce the motion with a graphical tablet in either direct or reverse order. The analyses of latency and timing for the sequences produced in either direct or reverse order showed that the order reversal does not affect the latency but results in some increase of the time spent (pause) in the vertices of piecewise trajectories. It also shown that the order reversal effect neither spatial characteristics of the reproduced sequences nor the frequency of the erroneous reproduction. The reported results suggest that the reversal of the order of elements in a sequence of movements occurs during the sequence execution

The contribution of gamma and beta-rhythms in working (WM), dynamics of retaining traces of memory on a delay interval and definition of brain structures involved in processes of (WM) was studied by the new method of the micro structural analysis for event=related oscillatory brain activity. Research is carried out on 8 subjects who has to retain four different double-digit in five seconds delay for the subsequent comparison with target and no=target stimuli and the performing of motor reaction. Retaining traces of memory has intermittent character and on a delay interval is presented by periodic flashes in activity of frequency=selective gamma and beta generators in prefrontal, associative, visual cortex and cerebellum with the leading role of prefrontal cortex. Joint activity of local brain structures is provided with the frequency-selective generators working both on different frequencies, and on the common frequency.