To the 70th anniversary of Anna Borisovna Leonova

Relevance. Problems of injuries and dynamics of working capacity in the production are important characteristics in the analysis of work efficiency, as their assessment allows to identify the advantages and disadvantages of work organization and to identify ways to improve them. However, the existing theoretical concepts do not adequately reflect the real working conditions and work tasks of modern types and forms of work. Further research and expansion of existing concepts are required to incorporate the present findings into the practice of improving the work organization and occupational safety.

Objective. The research aim of the discussed stage was to identify key factors among working conditions and work tasks affecting occupational safety of plant employees.

Methods. The design of the study included two directions – 1) analysis of occupational injuries/errors as integral indicators of occupational safety, and 2) comparison of data gathered from previously performed legal audit of working conditions with data of real-time observations of work process. In total, 209 incidents were analyzed on the sample of 2 professional groups of employees - operators of stamping lines and drivers of forklifts.

Results.

1. The maximum frequency of injury incidents in both group happens in the period between 3d and 4th working hours in all three shifts.

2. The maximum frequency of both injury and errors surprisingly takes place during the first shift (6:00 a.m. - 14:30 p.m.): the ratio of % injuries (from the total) during the first shift to second to third is 56%:22%:3% for operators, 50%:33%:6% for drivers.

3. The key specificity of the operators’ work activity was allocated: they are constantly carrying out tactile quality control on a production line. This work task is not regarded in normative documents and in normative assessment, but is the key psychological factor of work intensity for this professional group.

Conclusion. The specificity of work tasks and conditions at modern production includes implicit factors that are not fully reflected in the regulative documents, and which require theoretical and methodological understanding by work psychology and ergonomics.

Relevance.The widespread introduction of digitalization and automation and their use in camera work leads to the acceleration of not only the labor process, but also the entire life of the labor subject. The effect of time perception on work was studied. However, the role of the subjective reflection of time intervals in an integrated system of labor activity in the conditions of work with time limits and deficits has not been studied enough.

Objective. Identification of the role and place of subjective assessment of professionally important time intervals in the system of regulation of activity in solving labor problems at different stages of the dynamics of the operator's performance in the production process.

Methods and sampling. Occupational study of labor; procedure for measuring time intervals; complex express methods for diagnosing the functional state of the subject of labor: 1) labor productivity, 2) physiological indicators, 3) subjective assessment of emotional tension (Spielberger — Hanin scale situational anxiety). The study involved female operators of the precision manufacturing “Assembly of Chips” of the electronics industry (21 people).

Results. The structure of the subjective assessment of the perception of professionally important time intervals determines the dynamic processes of time regulation. The temporal regulation of the labor of operators has specificity in different functional states arising at different stages of working capacity.

Conclusion. The time regulation of the main labor operations is central to the functional system of performing activities.

Relevance. To satisfy with the needs of practice work psychology studies the states of reduced productivity such as fatigue, monotony, and satiation. The chronic forms of these states may exert professional deformation in the personality andpsychosomatic diseases. In modern societies work became less difficult physically but the accelerating pace of technological progress means a person needs to learn new technologies, work methods and even new professions permanently. As a result, the problem of chronic fatigue is even more acute than before. Therefore, studies in the development of chronic fatigue, conducted by A.B. Leonova and her disciples 30 years ago, preserve their relevance.

Objective. To study changes in emotional-personal and motivational characteristics of microelectronic industry female workers associated with the formation of chronic fatigue.

Method. Longitudinal study of two groups of subjects with the different levels of chronic fatigue was based on the following inventories: Еysenk Personality Inventory, Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, short multifactorial personality inventory Mini-mult (SMOL), Leonova’s acute and chronic exhaustion questionnaire.

Results. It was found that the work of microelectronic industry female workers results in the formation of chronic fatigue. The following personality distortions associated with increase in chronic fatigue were found: reduced self-esteem, the prevalence of failure avoidance motivation, increased anxiety, ineffective ways of compensating anxiety, a conflict way of interacting with people. The further adaptation to professional duties may lead to the weakening of these negative states such as the normalization of anxiety, the reduction of rigidity, the normalization of communication with other people.

Conclusions. Increase in chronic fatigue can lead to the formation of negative personality states with special emotional and motivational features. As an individual adapts to her working conditions, these traits can be compensated.

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.

Relevance of the research is based on the development of modern technological innovative organizations, dynamic organizational environment and job stressors connected with inaction of human adoptive processes which provoke professional deformations in employees.

Objective. To provide theoretical, methodological and empirical base of professional deformations’ research in innovative sphere professions as the situation of development of destructive or adoptive job performance mechanisms.

Methodology. 927 subjects, innovative sphere professionals, took part in the study. To obtain data were used: Managerial Stress Survey (Leonova, 2006); means to assess the modality specific professional deformations as a base of self-management programs; psychological self-regulation methods.

Results. It was found the job conditions and job content in innovative sphere professions that predicted the risk group of professional deformations’ development. Chronic professional stress manifestations (anxiety, exhaustion, aggressive and depressive behavior tendencies) were found as predictors professional deformations in innovative sphere employees. The mechanisms of modality specific professional deformations were analyzed; the effectiveness of different integrative image based psychological self-regulation methods is connected with adoptive modality specific professional deformations in innovative sphere employees.

Conclusions. The principle of professional deformations’ development in innovative sphere employees is based on cumulative effect of acute job stress and chronic job stress syndrome. Destructive professional deformations and adoptive modality specific professional deformations in employees develop on the influence of job demands in innovative sphere professions.

Relevance. The problem of change in cognitive performance under more complicated activity conditions is of interest to psychologists and scholars in neuro- and informational sciences. Without its solution it’s impossible to model cognitive activity and predict its efficiency in different situations. Tasks that access attention and working memory resources are of particular interest. The level of emotional tension is often considered a factor hampering the task solution. Previously, authors showed that emotional tension leads to change in spatial distribution of attention and in cognitive strategies that provide solutions to more complex tasks.

Objective. To determine how test anxiety influences the mental rotation task performance. 

Methods and sampling. Two groups of subjects were asked to solve the mental rotation task either under emotionally neutral conditions or under the conditions when task performance was significant to the subject. The emotional state of subjects was controlled with questionnaires. In addition, the individual level of stress resistance was measured.

Results. We obtained a linear effect of test-stimulus orientation on reaction time (that was Shepard and Metzler’s discovery). In the situation of emotional tension the average solving time slightly increased and the number of correct answers slightly decreased. Any significant change in task solving strategies was related to the level of stress resistance in subjects.

Conclusion. The cognitive strategies are transformed under impact of emotional tension and whether the subject would choose a constructive strategy or a non-constructive one depends on the subject’s stress resistance. Subjects with lower stress resistance have difficulty distributing cognitive resources, rotating figures in the mental space. 

Relevance. The growing interest in assessment, development and maintenance of professional success is actual in the field of organizational psychology. It emphasizes the need to study the role of effective functional state self-regulation as a factor of professional success. 

Objective. The objective of this article is the systematization of the results of a number of studies on the analysis of effective functional state self-regulation as a factor of professional success.

Method. The complex diagnostic package was used. It includes surveys and questionnaires for analysis of subjective image of working conditions and personal current functional state, means of functional state self-regulation, the symptoms of chronic negative functional states and professional personal deformation as consequences of functional state self-regulation system failure.

Results. The results revealed that the features of the effective functional state self-regulation system as a factor of professional success are associated with the plastic adaptation repertoire of self-regulation means and techniques of highly successful professionals, applied adequately to the working conditions of increased job intensity of short-term and prolonged type.

Conclusions. The obtained results confirm the key importance of specialists` functional state self-regulation in supporting and providing of professional success. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the tensed working condition.

Relevance. The development of a conceptual apparatus and the choice of methodological tools for describing and diagnosing various functional states of a labor subject are relevant in connection with the need to ensure the psychological well-being of a specialist. Consideration of the FS from the standpoint of the structural-integrative approach (A.B. Leonova), as a complex, multi-level system object, allows using the psychosemantics apparatus to describe an individual value system represented at different levels of consciousness and also determined by the activity context.

Objective. Demonstration of the psychosemantic approach in the diagnosis of functional states on the example of studying the subjective experience of experiencing the current and "my favorite" state.

Methods. Diagnostic techniques: “Scale of States” (A.B. Leonova), “Scale of reactive (situational) anxiety” (C. Spilberger), “Scale of situational depression” (C. Spielberger) and Artemyeva's semantic differential (16 scales). Respondents - 36 students-psychologists.

Results. The differences in the procedures of presentation and analysis of data obtained in two psychosemantic ways are shown. On the descriptions of the current and favorite states was obtained 4-factor space. The current state of the respondents does not correspond, in their opinion, to the beloved. The scales according to which these states differ: “light — heavy”, “active — passive”, “weak — strong”.

Conclusions. In psychosemantics of states, the choice of different schemes for counting and discussing data is dictated by the peculiarities of the tasks decided by the researcher. This can be a search for group characteristics or an analysis of individual differences in the results. Psychosemantics of FS based on the structural and regulatory approach allows not only to evaluate the object under study, but also to receive indirect information about the features of the respondents themselves who carry out the assessment procedure.

Relevance. It is stressed that the structural-integrative approach for human functional states’ analysis, elaborated at the end of 80s on the base of system analysis of work activity, formed the appropriate theoretical frame for evaluation and prediction of workability and reliability alteration. At present, in innovative work environment, this approach is still the adequate base for urgent and challenging issues, both scientific and practical, such as analysis of work activity regulation mechanisms in tensed work situations; evaluation of a state’s self-regulation in work conditions under long-term strain; elaboration of applied programs for the development of adaptation resources.

Objective. The article focuses on the basic issues of the structural-integrative approach, where a state is defined as a special structure of inner means for tasks execution regulation, acquired by a subject under specific work conditions to human functional states’ analysis. The main aim – the estimation of the approach capabilities for human functional states’ investigations in modern organizational and professional environment.

Method. Methods of multilevel assessment of a functional state’s manifestation are analyzed. The possibilities of data integration technologies, used for different functional states identification, are discussed. The different technologies for self-regulation of a state are viewed taking in account their capabilities to develop and improve the individual adaptation potential in work.

Results. The results of the main research based on the structural-integrative approach is overviewed. Special attention is given to the following question: is the structural-integrative approach worth implementation for the evaluation of a human functional state in applied research, when it is not possible to get data about manifestations of a state on all necessary levels - physiological, psychological (including cognitive and subjective sublevels) and behavioral. The example of such research is presented. 

Conclusions. The results ofmore than 30 years of the structural-integrative approach implementation proved its efficiency for human functional states’ evaluation in dynamic work environment. The possibilities of the approach for functional states’ analysis under work conditions of high autonomy and self-determination in work tasks planning and execution are defined.

Interview with Leonova Anna Borisovna by Noskova Olga Gennadievna is available only in russian.