Background. Sports activities set high demands on the personal qualities and abilities of athletes, which increases their emotional tension, and negatively affects their self-esteem, self-confidence and motivation. Studying manifestations of the personal emotional sphere of athletes allows choosing effective methods of psychological work to adjust their competitive states up to an optimal level.

The Objective of the research is to learn the specific features of the personal emotional sphere as a regulator of the functional state in young athletes.

Design. The paper analyzes the manifestations of personal emotional sphere of females aged 11-13 years involved in rhythmic gymnastics (N = 20). The results of the relationship and the ratio of the athletes’ personal parameters are presented.

Research Results. A direct significant relationship (p = 0.01) of the anxiety level in athletes with neuroticism, irritability, suspiciousness and sensitivity is revealed. A positive significant relationship (p = 0.01) of guilt and aggressiveness expressed mainly indirectly is established. The obtained features of the relationship of the studied characteristics of young athletes are generally consistent with the results of similar studies performed by other specialists.

Conclusion. The results can be viewed as manifestations of the adaptation mechanisms of young gymnasts in the tense conditions of sports activities, as well as fear of disapproval from a significant circle of people. The revealed emotional-personal characteristics of young sportswomen are probably due to psycho-physiological changes associated with adolescence and the specifics of sports activities. The results of the study generally raise additional questions and allow us to outline areas for further research on the problem under discussion. It is important to study the influence of the emotional state in athletes on the ability to fully recover from intensive physical burnout and follow sleep and rest schedule.

The paper presents a scientific approach to interpreting physiological data obtained during the psychophysiological detection of deception procedure. The approach is based on identification of individual form of human physiological response to significant stimulus (i.e. symptom complex).

The author provides a short historical overview of scientific literature about the presence of human physiological ability to respond to a significant stimulus in a certain way due to psychophysiological characteristics of individuals.

It is well known that only significant stimuli can cause pronounced and stable physiological responses from a person during psychophysiological detection of deception examination. However, the recorded physiological activity may be conditioned not only by the significance of the stimulus but also other factors. Therefore, one goal of interpreting the research results is the selection of certain reactions out of the general dynamics of vital physiological background of the human body. The changes of physiological features recorded by the polygraph are conditioned by the stimulus significance but not by other physiological activity of the subject.

The paper contains methods of evaluating the suitability of the functional state of a subject to using the polygraph from the perspective of ergonomics and integrated approach. According to the author during the polygraph testing a psychophysiological experiment should be carried out. Through the performance evaluation it allows to define exactly the functional state of a subject that contributes to detecting his/her physiological responses that describe the significance of presented stimuli (i.e. symptom complex).

For the first time in the scientific literature this paper presents an author’s definition of the symptom complex. Also it gives a detailed description of a symptom complex detection algorithm in the psychophysiological research using the polygraph. The author defines the field of application for the particular individual form of response. The paper is of profound practical and scientific importance for polygraph examiners who work with human resources, assist law enforcement in criminal investigations, conducts internal workplace investigations, perform functions of a forensic expert in court.