Articles

Background. The relevance of the study is due to understanding of important role of imagination in the cognitive and emotional development of children as well as the contradictory results of modern research on imagination development in older pre- school age.

Objective. The study had its purpose to assess the level of productive imagination of the present-day preschoolers educated in the senior groups of kindergarten and to identify types of imagination being based on statistical data processing.

Methods. The study implemented the technique “Complete the drawing” (a modified Torrens’ Test) and the typology of productive imagination by O.M. Dyachenko (2007). Drawings of preschoolers were analyzed in terms of elaboration, flexibility, and originality of images. Processing the obtained data included calculation of the mean and median values, standard deviations; the cluster analysis method; the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis’s criterion and Kolmogorov-Smirnov’s, Mann-Whitney’s criteria were used.

Sample. The study involved 768 preschoolers of older groups of kindergartens in four regions of Russia (Moscow, the Republics of Sakha and Tatarstan, Perm Territory) aged 58 to 72 months (of which 47.9% were boys).

Results. Modern methods of statistical data processing have made it possible to identify and compare significantly different types of productive imagination in preschoolers. According to the results of the assessment of imagination development of the of older preschool children in different regions of Russia, a similar distribution was obtained for 6 types of productive imagination. The study revealed the low level of imagination development in about half of older preschoolers: children either do not accept the task at all (type 0), or draw individual objects that are not detailed (type 1). Productive imagination at the age of 5–6 years develops heterochronously: children with different types of imagination have relatively high scores for various parameters (types 2, 3, 4). Less than 5% of older preschoolers are characterized by a high level of imagination development when children use “inclusions” (type 5).

Conclusion. The results of the study expand the understanding of productive imagination in today’s preschool children and contribute to studying its development in the changed conditions of educational environment. The typology of productive imagination built on the basis of quantitative methods can be useful for both researchers and practicing psychologists, preschool educators.

Background. The modern information space containing both reliable and quasi-scientific information has a significant impact on the formation of students’ scientific worldview.

Objective.To obtain an empirical support for the theoretical model of the formation of scientific worldview in the middle-adolescent students which was formulated in the framework of the cultural-historical conception.

Methods. A special questionnaire was developed containing 16 pairs of statements. Each pair presented both scientific and an everyday interpretation of a natural science phenomenon. The respondents had to choose the answer considered to be correct. When processing the data, the number of answers corresponding to the modern scientific concepts was taken into account.

Sample.The study involved 200 high school students and 196 junior college students aged 16–18 years, a total of 396 people (232 girls and 164 boys).

Results. The study has revealed that the worldview of middle-adolescent students is predominantly characterized by an average level of scientific concepts and presents an individual combination of scientific and everyday knowledge. It has been found out that boys demonstrate a significantly higher level of scientific views than girls. College students’ outlook tends to be more scientific than that of high school students, but the differences linked to the type of educational institution do not reach statistical significance.

Conclusion. The theoretical model of scientific worldview formation in the middle adolescence proposed by L.I. Bozhovich in the framework of cultural-historical approach is not confirmed. It is assumed that the key factor in the formation of an individual’s scientific worldview is not the scope of one’s knowledge but its personal meaning. The data obtained expand understanding of formation of the students’ worldview and provide new insights into the content and structure of modern individual’s out- look.

Background. The article presents the results of a longitudinal study of the cognitive-emotional development of children from the standpoint of the structural-dialectical approach. The authors consider the indicators of the formation of dialectical and formal-logical thinking and their relationship with emotion understanding in the children of preschool and primary school age.

Objective of the study was to test the hypothesis about the relationship between the development of dialectical and formal operations and emotion understanding in the children aged 5–9 years.

Methods. To assess the formation of mental operations and emotion understanding in 5–9-year-old children, a special toolkit was developed. The structural-dialectical method of analysis was implemented to study the features of dialectical thinking and emotion understanding in the children of senior preschool and primary school age. Assessment of the formal thinking development was carried out in the context of the operational theory of intelligence developed by J. Piaget.

Sample. The study involved 50 children aged 5–9 years (56% boys and 44% girls), who were tested in the senior and preschool groups of kindergarten and then in the second grade of school.

Results. Two forms of dialectical transformations were found to exist: substantive and structural. The obtained results have shown that already at preschool age there are mechanisms which allow children to apply dialectical thinking operations together with formal-logical operations when solving tasks related to understanding of mixed emotions.

Conclusions. The results obtained confirmed the hypothesis about the existence of correlation of the dialectical and formal thinking with emotion understanding in the children of senior preschool and primary school age. In the course of studying the cognitive-emotional development of children in primary school, a trend was found associated with the transition from dialectical to formal-logical thinking. This result needs further investigating.

Background. The relevance of the study is due to the search for regulatory and intrapersonal resources for a successful way out of difficult life situations on the example of the postoperative period after high-tech operations on the large joints.

Objective. The study had its purpose to scrutinize the contribution of conscious selfregulation and coping strategies to overcoming difficult life situations.

Methods. “Self-Regulation Profile Questionnaire by Morosanova — SRPQM 2020”, questionnaire “Methods of Coping Behavior” by R. Lazarus, questionnaire of cognitive regulation of emotions by N. Garnefsky, “Knee Score Scale” modified by D. Insall, “Hip Joint Assessment System”.

Sample of the study consisted of 128 people of them: 80 men, 48 women (average age 55.76 ± 12.7), who underwent high-tech operations on the large joints. Measurements were carried out in two stages: before the operation and 1.5 months later.

Results confirm that most people experience difficulties in the process of self-recovery after high-tech operations. The study revealed a positive contribution of adaptive coping strategies, such as problem-solving planning and reviewing the situation from the positive side to the patients’ recovery. These coping strategies make a positive contribution to compliance with standard recovery deadlines and reduce the effect of ineffective cognitive-emotional strategies. Avoidance, denial of the problem, fantasizing and emotional distancing prevent a successful exit from a difficult life situation and delay the recovery process. The study also showed contribution of self-accusation, exaggeration of occurred events significance and blaming others to the difficulties that arise during self-rehabilitation. The research results demonstrate the system-forming resource role of conscious self-regulation in the successful overcoming difficult life situations, where conscious self-regulation acts as a central predictor and mediator of other personality characteristics.

Conclusions. Adaptive coping strategies and conscious self-regulation make a significant contribution to overcoming difficult life situations. Self-regulation is a predictor and mediator of health indicators and compliance with standard rehabilitation deadlines; it plays a system-forming resource role in restraining ineffective ways of cognitive-emotional regulation and coping strategies in the process of overcoming difficult life situations.

Background. In modern conditions of existence, it is difficult to talk about the stability of a person’s identity: it fluctuates, transforms, multiplies, and disappears. The instability of identity is manifested not only in the problems of self-determination, adaptation, self-realization, but also in the risks of losing the opportunity to be a subject of one’s own life, to consciously identify and responsibly present oneself to the outside world. The research shows that personal identity provides internal harmony and stability of the subject. However, currently we don’t have a corresponding diagnostic tool with satisfactory psychometric indicators, which makes it difficult to study, monitor, and determine available resources for maintaining the stability of the personality in a changing world.

Objective. The study was aimed at creation and psychometric verification of the methodology for diagnostics of personal identity, providing empirical verification of its structure, assessment of validity, internal consistency, and retest reliability.

Methods. The study implemented the methods of semi-structured interview, unfinished sentences, survey, expert assessments, calculation of statistical correlation coefficients and comparison of averages, factor analysis as well as standardization procedures and psychometric checks of validity and reliability of the test.

Sample. The total volume of the research measurements was carried out on a sample of 1,384 people (36.8% men, 63.2% women) aged 13 to 90.

Results. The results of psychometric verification of the test (N = 500) showed a satisfactory degree of internal consistency, retest reliability of the scales (factors) “reflected Self ”, “unique Self ” and variability of the values on the “personal Self ” scale.

Conclusion. The methodology can be used in the scientific and practical activities of psychologists specializing in the problems of personality psychology, in the diagnostics of self-identification processes of personality in various life situations and in different periods of life, while determining the stability of personality in conditions of social change.

Background. The internal logic of the development of social psychology as a science, as well as the rapid changes in society affecting its subject field, require discussion on the current scientific problems and prospects for further social psychological research, many of which are related to the development of scientific directions initiated by A.L. Zhuravlev and his colleagues.

The aim of the study was to describe the contribution of A.L. Zhuravlev to the development of a number of branches of Russian social psychology and, on the basis of the concepts developed by him, to identify some of the most promising areas for further research.

Results. The study singled out the following branches and directions of social psychology, the formation of which in Russia is closely connected with the works of A.L. Zhuravlev: psychology of management, joint activity and collective subject; psychology of morality; economical psychology; social psychology of the city; studies of the psychological state of the Russian society; studies of attitudes to new technologies and the influence of technologies on socio-psychological phenomena; psychology of nuclear deterrence and strategic security, psychology of global risks. In each of these areas, the prospects for further research are outlined, taking into account the social, economic and technological changes in Russia.

Conclusion. Presented analysis allows to consider collective subjectivity as an integral phenomenon that connects promising areas of research in social psychology, and the works of A.L. Zhuravlev can serve as a basis for their further development.

Background. The study considers the features of manifestation of the latent social groups (implicit, hidden, not declared, not supported by social structures and institutions) as a special socio-psychological phenomenon.

Objective. The study had its purpose to reveal the features of the social environment as potential conditions for the formation, functioning and evolution of the latent social groups. Hypotheses: 1) There are pre-forms of social associations of people (which can be conditionally called “latent social groups” (LSG)). 2) Emergence of LSG can have grounds in different conditions of external and internal environment of the subject (including those of the social environment perceived by a person as subjectively significant for him in relation to certain life goals).

Methods: categorical-theoretical analysis, study of literary sources, empirical research (questionnaires), multivariate methods of parametric statistics. By means of the author’s methodology (questionnaire “Dynamics of professional life style” — DPLS), respondents assessed the role of social environment conditions as “professional factors”, the dynamics of their own professionalism since their 20 to 65 years (retrospectively to the current age and prospectively — predicting the dynamics of subsequent evolution). Socio-demographic and job characteristics of the respondents were also recorded.

Sample. 482 people were interviewed, men and women aged 30–50 (132 civil servants, 129 engineers and heads of departments of industrial enterprises, 221 managers). The total sample was repeatedly divided into groups according to research tasks. The division criteria were gender, job position of the subjects, conditions of the meso-environment subjectively perceived to be significant as the factors of their professionalism (circumstances, science, art, religion).

Results. The empirical study results support the initial hypotheses. When dividing the sample according to different criteria, both obvious (men/women, specialists/managers) and environmental conditions assessed as “professionalism factors”, the obtained groups differ significantly in a number of variables.

Conclusions. In the same social space-time, various social associations can coexist different in the degree of their manifestation, development, active functioning as social groups. The phenomenon of “latent social groups” (LSG) appears to be a pre-form of manifested social groups with different trajectories of their possible subsequent development. LSG are possible associations of people who are similar to each other in a number of important aspects of life (value orientations, lifestyle, etc.), potentially capable of integration and interaction in achieving common goals, comfortable interpersonal communication, maintaining typical patterns of behavior, etc. LSG represent the pre-stages of the possible formation and development of various social structures.

Background. The study relevance is due to the need of expanding approaches to the prevention of maladaptive forms of adolescent behavior.

Objective: to find out and consider the features of concepts of death in younger and older adolescence on the basis of analysis of domestic and foreign research.

Results. The study considered the cognitive, emotional, and motivational-behavioral components of the adolescents’ ideas of death. It is shown that in the process of becoming a teenager, the cognitive component undergoes certain changes from understanding death as a transition to a different state to realizing the absolute finiteness of existence. At the same time, changes in the value-semantic sphere become of particular importance, when, maintaining the fear of death as the content of emotional component, the hedonistic type of attitude to life comes to the fore, focusing on the feelings of significance and value of life. A mature understanding and attitude to death includes the awareness of irreversibility of the cessation of the body and psyche functioning, the universality and causality of this process.

Conclusion. Ideas about death develop with age and differ significantly in younger and older adolescence. The “maturation” of the death concept, awareness of the relationship between life and death is accompanied by the experience of an existential crisis and, as a result, can become a prerequisite for the formation of maladaptive (auto-aggressive) forms of behavior.

Relevance. The study relevance is determined by the need to investigate the processes of gender socialization in the mid and late teens in the modern socio-cultural situation characterized by erosion of traditional gender stereotypes and transformation of basic representations about the content of men and women’s social roles.

Objective. The study had its purpose to explore and compare the boys’ and girls’ representations about modern men and women.

Methods. Data collection was carried out using the method of free descriptions, content analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics, Student’s t-test, r-Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, and share difference reliability criterion. Comparative historical analysis was carried out using the data obtained in the 1980s.

Sample. The sample included 353 high school and college students aged 16–19 years (161 boys and 192 girls).

Results. The initial hypothesis about the coexistence of both traditional and modern gender models among today’s teenagers has been confirmed only in relation to their ideas of the modern woman. When describing her, both boys and girls rely on traditional stereotypes of femininity as well as modern ideas (androgyny, egalitarianism). Modern man is still viewed and evaluated by both boys and girls through the prism of traditional masculinity stereotypes. Girls’ representations about modern men and women are less rigid and not as stereotypical as those of boys. They reflect to a greater extent the transformation of rigidgender stereotypes taking place in the modern society. Modern boys’ and girls’ representations about men and women are in many ways similar to the representations of their peers of the Soviet era. The differences are associated with less attention to family roles and a greater interest in appearance, self-expression, success, and mental health.

Conclusions. Despite the transformation of gender stereotypes taking place in the modern society, boys’ and girls’ representations about men and women are still based mainly on traditional ideas of masculinity/femininity.