Modernization of equipment as well as extension of competition schedules and programs that have taken place over the past few decades have dramatically influenced professional activities of cross-country skiers. In particular, acuteness of competitive struggle has extremely increased and as a result psychological preparation of an athlete has become a very important and sometimes crucial factor.

Today, cross-country skiing is one of the most demanding sports associated with critical aerobic loading and cyclic explosive contractions involving all main muscle groups. Characteristic motor activity is highly uniform and automatic that potentially leads to negative psychological states decreasing motor efficiency. Athlete’s high motivation is the main tool to withstand this phenomenon. Muscles arbitrary relaxation rate (ARR) is considered to be the most important parameter of contractive activity. ARR is determined by the function of CNS inhibitory systems and decreased during emotional stress, which can be managed using respective psychological skills training (PST) features. Such interrelationship allows to reveal complex systemic links between various types of training and introduces the problem of the appropriate integration of PST into the entire training system. Available research data suggest that self-talk and mental imagery are quite useful as PST tools without regard to a skier’s level of expertise. Based on an individual interpretation for summarized data the author posed the following hypothesis: conversion from automatically executed to consciously controlled components of activity is involved to functionality of mental imagery; the conversion efficiency can be enhanced by means of attitude of intentional search for such components during visualization.

This paper considers the issues of copyright protection of intellectual property, produced and consumed in the area of psychology as psychological diagnostics. Getting to the consideration of copyright in psychodiagnostics, the author finds it necessary to focus on the very concept of copyright and its forms, and then, based on this knowledge, to turn to the analysis of the intellectual activity used in psychodiagnostics.

Considerable attention is given to the review and analysis of the concept of copyright as a case of intellectual property created in the psycho-diagnostics, and also classification of copyright objects and the order of their consumption in scientific, educational and law enforcement researchers and psychologists. Much attention is paid to the legal protection of works produced by foreign scientists and official development psychologists. Basic copyright and compliance mechanisms for the consumption of tests, questionnaires, techniques, computer programs, etc. are described. Cases of free use of works made for hire in psychological diagnostics are provided. A difficult problem of protecting creative art is analyzed. From this position, various aspects of the concept are considered.

Depending on the fact whether the newly created work is based on products that existed before, it is possible to distinguish an original, derivative, or compiled product. The original is a work within which every form element is created by a particular author or authors without borrowed elements.

The article presents the results of a pilot psychophysiological research based on the analysis of changes of brain activity and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) of the human while giving up smoking using the method proposed by the Russian researcher V.M. Zakharov. The method is based on the theory of the gradual development of higher mental functions proposed by P.Ya. Galperin.

16 subjects (8 males and 8 females) took part in the psychophysiological experiments. In the analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG) spectral composition, the absolute values of alpha-rhythm powers (in electrodes O2-A2, O1-A1, P4-A2, P3-A1) and beta-rhythm (in electrodes F4-A2, F3-A1) were taken into account. ANS activity of was estimated on the basis of the electrocardiogram analysis. Participant’s functional state was valued according to the psychological testing procedure «Health, Energy, and Mood» (HEM). According to the results of the pilot study, it was revealed that the functional state of the nervous system (estimated by EEG and ANS parameters) and the subjective (psychological) state (evaluated according to HEM) during smoking and during quitting smoking depend not only on the duration of tobacco addiction, but also on the smoker’s attitude to the entire process of smoking. Cognitive activity during smoking (controlling the amount of smoked tobacco) looks like an “instrument” that returns to a smoker his/her original functional state of a «non-smoker» and thereby facilitates the process of giving up smoking. The obtained data are preliminary and require further clarification. Over the long term, they can be used to develop «psychological strategy» in smoking control.

A new efficient method for automatic emotion recognition by speech signal based on the four-dimensional emotions spherical model and principles of information encoding in the nervous system, is described. As a result, the principle of the relative cross-frequency amplitude-variable encoding of emotions in speech signal is proposed and experimentally tested. The hypothesis on the speech being a multichannel signal (a frequency diversity) with each band having possible independent fast micro amplitude change was tested. The agreement between the selected parameters of the speech signal and the subjective perception of the same samples (short words «yes» and «no») in the system of formalized parameters of psychophysiological emotion for the four-dimensional model is shown. The obtained parameters (factors) may be characterized as bimodal spectral filters. Factor 1 has a basic value is 3000 Hz and the secondary value is 500 Hz. It determines the change in the sound signal in accordance with «character emotion» axis, and the contribution of this component as compared with other components, the more positive (better useful) ones are estimated in the utterance. Factor 2 has two extremes at frequencies that lie somewhere near 1000 and 1750 Hz. It determines the degree of information uncertainty as opposed to confidence (calm). Factor 3 characterizes affection (love). It corresponds to the most widely spaced peaks: low frequencies of about 150 Hz and high-frequencies of 3500 Hz. In yes-no dichotomy «no» is accompanied by the absence of active rejection, and «yes» is characterised as a positive assessment. Factor 4 has similar range between 600 Hz and 1500 Hz. The configuration is close to factor 2, but it is shifted with respect to the low-frequency region, getting their peaks in its local minimum. This component determines whether aggressive (active) or passive (fear, escape) reaction is provoked in the subject. The results obtained confirm the efficiency of the proposed general anthropomorphic approach to the development of technical systems, in particular, the methods of speech signal processing and data presentation. It also confirms the identity of a previously identified psychophysiological model parameters, further justifying the preference (compared with other well-known ones) of this emotions classification, both in terms of dimensions and orientation of the axes of the model space.

The modern world sets high requirements for work structure. Therefore, a great number of services become outsourcing. In order to reduce their charges, various enterprises found virtual project teams (PT). The main problems in this decision are connected with high necessity of PT members’ self-regulation. One of the reasons of PT members’ self-regulation failure is procrastination phenomenon. Over 15-25% of people demonstrate procrastination behaviour. Procrastination can be analysed as a type of inadequate coping behaviour, and it correlates with high level of stress. Thus, the main purpose of this research is to analyze the procrastination phenomenon in PT members with different job stress level.

We collected the following data: objective measures (age, gender); General Procrastination Scale (Lay, 1986); Job Diagnostic Survey (Hackman, Oldham, 1980); Survey for actual and chronic stress manifestation assessment (Leonova, 2004). 52 respondents from several PTs were under study. Subjects show high level of stress manifestation and moderate level of procrastination. Regression analysis was also conducted (adj. R-squared=0.457, p<0.001). Only appraisal of chronic resource exhaustion and job experience emerged as significant predictors of procrastination. Conducted research should help in PT members’ job organization in order to protect them from deadline breakdowns.

In the modern world a dominant role in everyday life is played by such media channels as television, video resources and the Internet. Perception of the world is reverberated by the more indirect images of this world, whereas visuality is the formative principle of visual culture. «The «visual turn» consists in the shift of modern methods of verbal perception toward visual, or image ones.

Images are the components of the mental architecture. Image sensitivity replaces the text and sometimes it complements the text. Topical issues of visualization require modernised research methods of media images, which must be included in the broader context of interdisciplinary research.

The Internet space acquires an independent meaning, it carries a growing set of social interactions and contacts. With the development of the Internet business, the linear narratives are replaced by hypertextual and visual ones. The Internet can be viewed in “the postmodern situation» as a setting of global automation, and also as endless polyphonic communication of independent segments once a common cultural and information space. The most active Internet audience is presented by young people. Within them the formation of various subcultures and communities is inherent, there is a new system for structuring culture.

In the modern consumer society, along with other advertising media, products are increasingly becoming a source of visual differentiation and entertainment. The visual impact of online advertising is determined by the fact that it represents the lifestyle and values of the youth subculture, constructs a new perception and develops a new structure of consciousness and vision of the world of young people.

One of the fundamental factors influencing an individual’s intent to emigrate is a sense of danger that triggers the decision on settling in another country. The intent to emigrate under modern conditions is decision making in the situation of choice and is determined by perceptions of one’s own security. Security of a person is the matter of his/her own efforts. Thus security is one of the leading factors of orientation and determination in the course of obtaining the notion of the outer world.

263 respondents aged from 20 to 40 participated in the study. Four groups of respondents (those with emigration intentions and with a sense of security; the ones lacking emigration intentions and with a sense of security; respondents with emigration intentions, with a feeling of being in danger; respondents lacking emigration intentions with a feeling of being in danger) were formed on the basis of two criteria: emigration intentions and a feeling of being secure/insecure. The results show that the most significant motives for changing the settling area are life standards and search for comfort, which is explained by a pronounced dissatisfaction with social and economic situation of the native land, and low income. It is identified that the groups mentioned differ in their social psychological characteristics of life satisfaction level, sense of happiness, sense of security, motives for possible emigration, concept of emigration. The contradiction between the stated positive attitude towards those who emigrate (“a person can live where he likes”) and the semantic meaning of the “Emigration” concept (“cowardice”, “attenuation of a state”, “escape”, “rats deserting the sinking ship”) was detected in all groups of the respondents.

The paper analyses the main achievements and development trends of the national psychology of thinking in the second half of the twentieth century from the point of view of the activity approach. This approach has been implemented in various forms (firstly by S.L. Rubinstein and his followers, secondly by A.N. Leontiev and his followers). The paper summarises and compares the results of long-term cycles of theoretical and experimental studies, and also confirms the synthesis of productivity based upon conceptions of thinking as a process and as an activity according to these research schools.

Based on the principle of the unity of consciousness and activity the authors emphasize the need of thinking in the context of the various activities and claim that the developed thinking should be studied as a separate, self-regulated function of the person with a multi-level psychological determination which presupposes goal-setting, motivational and emotional, meaningful, and reflective functions. The increasing role of the study of the subject of thought, and in a wider sense the cognitive activity in the context of the analysis of mental development (in history, ontogenesis and actual genesis) is being stressed in the paper. It involves identifying both general and specific patterns of micro genesis and macro genesis of thinking.

The restrictions of the rapidly developing informational approach developed by cognitive sciences, inability to reduce the psychological reality to the model laid down in the artificial intelligence systems are being proved in the paper. It is argued that the main feature of thinking as a process is its continuity, which is conceptually genetic (non- disjunctive and non-dichotomous item) in contrast with the separate cycles of any computer programme: all stages of the thinking process is continuously followed by another one, and therefore, being objectively different, they are indivisible, they are mutually determined by the dynamics of intellectual and emotional processes and their products that are attributable to the different levels of awareness and arbitrariness.

At the same time, the paper emphasizes the fact that in modern conditions the intellectual activity produced and processed by computers plays a new significant object of psychological research, as the human societal progress of requires substantial advance in the study of thinking. Considering the rapid dissemination of science-based (physiological, logical and mathematical, cybernetic, sociological) reductionism the authors call for a reorientation of research in the psychology of thinking. First and foremost, they offer to study creative, non-algorithmic, non-formalised components (i.e., to analyze the personal aspect of thinking, which determins patterns of generating and operating new needs, motives, emotions, judgments, meanings, purposes and methods of thinking activity). In this paper we prove a significant advantage of the activity approach methodology, its heuristic approach and prospects to disclose specific features of intricate psychological forms of human thinking.

The paper is devoted to the capabilities of eye movement recording technologies (eye-tracking) in the psychological preparation of athletes. The advantages of using eye-tracking in sport psychology are as follows: the ability to «see through the eyes of an athlete» ongoing training and / or the competitive challenge, the possibility of combining eye movement recording with other instrumental methods (methods of EEG measuring, GSR biofeedback technology, virtual reality, etc.), high ecological validity of experiments using eye tracking mobile systems, the ability to use eye tracking systems not only for diagnostic purposes, but also for training athletes. In chronological order, there are examples of practical implementation of eye-tracking systems in foreign and domestic sport psychology: the results of the eye-tracking in games and precise sports, martial arts and other sports are described.

The results of an experimental application of eye movement recording systems in climbing are considered. In particular, the paper discusses the possibility of using the eyetracking technology in teaching athletes effective strategies for visual search when previewing the climbing route. The results of express survey among rock climbers and mountaineers (N = 120 ) on the importance of the preview and analysis of climbing routes before their actual performance. The experiment using eye-tracking technology was conducted at the artificial relief. 23 climbers participated in the experiment. In this paper we use «Eye-tracking glasses SMI» mobile eye tracking system. As a result, visual strategies that are c

Dear collegues! We present the final issue of our magazine for 2010 year. This year was pretty hard for the Russian psychological society, though very interesting and rich.

Here are just a few results of this year. We succeeded not only in saving existing fields of trainings for psychologists in the system of the highest psychological education, but also in adding the new ones. It is really important for the harmonization of the educational standards with European psychological certificate EuroPsy.

The article defines improvisation in organizational psychology and outlines the conditions of effective collective improvisation in the management team. The author also describes basic competencies of a manager-improviser.

Supported by the results of empirical research on connection between intellectual-personal potential of students and their creativity in the process of innovative learning, held in the Lomonosov Moscow state University, aims and objectives of innovative teaching in higher education are discussed.

The author, Head of Lomonosov Moscow State University's Department of Psychology's Social Psychology Chair, speaks about training and scientific work at the Chair. The features of the curriculum are discussed. Information on the publications of staff is provided.

The author, Head of Lomonosov Moscow State University's Department of Psychology's Chair of Psychogenetics, tells about the work of the newly created Chair. The article discusses works of B.M.Teplov — the founder of the school of differential psychology and psycho-physiology, which objectives are related to the tasks of psychogenetics. The main scientific accomplishments of the Chair and features of teaching process are also presented.

The 5th Congress of Russian Psychological Society