The paper is devoted to psychological aspects and psychological perception of spatial and temporal dimensions of the historical process. Space and time do not exist separately, they are closely interconnected: everything that happens in history has certain spatial and temporal position.

From historical perspective spatial characteristics of a particular territory are twofold: territory’s psychical position remains unperturbed, while its political status and national affiliation are revised in the course of time. Territories vary in their value: the most valuable objects of physical environment such as sea-coasts, courses and estuaries of rivers, mineral deposits, industrial regions, etc. serve as objects of contention on the international arena, while areas that do not possess such characteristics can be of no interest to international actors.

Historical time does not necessarily coincide with chronological time. For example, according to Eric Hobsbawm, the so-called long Nineteenth Century lasted from 1789 to 1914, while the short Twentieth Century lasted only from 1914 to 1991. Psychological time should also be taken into account – perception of relation between past, present, and future developments, as well as perception of chronological intervals within which certain historical developments take place. Time sets chronological framework for the historical process, it can be both cyclical and linear at the same time.

Progress in transportation and communication leads to the situation where linear characteristics of space and time remain the same, while space compresses and time accelerates: movement of physical objects and information transfer take less and less time. Such process was ushered in during the Nineteenth Century (Transportation and Communication Revolutions) and it accelerated in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Present wars can last only months and days, not years; negotiations are conducted directly by chief executives or under their close surveillance; time allotted for decision making during crises decreases dramatically.

The paper analyzes the problem of the image of the Russian North. The image of the North is quite popular in the Russian society and performs objective reality. This image is created by the combination of rational experience and artistic perception. Psychologist V.P. Zinchenko said that «picturesque consideration» is not a metaphor in causing the image of «visual thinking». The ratio of quantitative and qualitative characteristics and the artistic perception changes over time and is highly dependent on the worldview of the person or society who creates this image, its level of culture, ethnicity, etc. In recent years, the image of the Russian North has become increasingly popular with politicians, who are in search of Russian civilizational identity, with geographers, who develop the basis of the new understanding of the cultural outline, and also with social scientists, who strive to use it in order to reconstruct the historical memory of the Russian people that was significantly undermined in the post-perestroika period.

The possibilities of shaping the image of the Russian North using only objective geographical characteristics and also their synthesis with artistic perception are considered. The former approach is marked as lacking potential, although it prevails in the Russian geography. The history of shaping the image of the Russian North is traced. The examples the image of the Russian North in literature, painting, music are adduced.

Nowadays the development of the theory of the cultural outline, which originates in the early twentieth century and then forgotten for the ideological reasons, allows to re-connect the natural sciences and the humanities characteristics of the territory mentioned, which contributes to shaping the entire image of the Russian North. Being juxtaposed to the spiritual nihilism of modern technological culture, the image of the Russian North in the memory of the Russian people is deemed as a metaphysical “Island of Salvation” possessing moral healing power. Recognizing the distinguished image of the Russian North with the Russian people allows to consider it as virtual cultural heritage of Russia.

In the article specific experimental studies, performed with the use of virtual reality systems are described, Promising directions of modification of research paradigms in cognitive, organizational, social and clinical psychology are introduced. The possibility of using new technology to address educational psychology, psychotherapy and psychological rehabilitation is analyzed.

In the article specific experimental studies, performed with the use of virtual reality systems are described, Promising directions of modification of research paradigms in cognitive, organizational, social and clinical psychology are introduced. The possibility of using new technology to address educational psychology, psychotherapy and psychological rehabilitation is analyzed.

The article is devoted to the problem of lightness perception. The strength of 3D simultaneous lightness contrast illusions was measured with the method of constant stimuli for thirty seven observers. The virtual reality technique was used to present stereo pairs of different 3D configurations of the illusion. The albedo-hypothesis and the coplanar ratio hypothesis were tested to explain the results. The changes of the illusion strength were consisted with the albedo hypothesis.