Background. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are nowadays widely used in various domains. Their use is connected with a broad range of psychological problems, in particular, within engineering psychology.

Objective. In this paper, typical engineering-psychological problems of interface design for UAVs are considered.

Design. Literature survey on topic related to UAV control. Results. Problems of managing sensory isolation, negative effects of automation failures, connection losses and monotony, as well as problems of supporting the work of UAVs operator teams were identified and solutions proposed. We also study methodological and methodical questions within the domain of interface design for controlling UAVs.

Conclusions. Designing interfaces for UAVs is a complex psychological task. There are perspectives of use for virtual reality, AI, predictive displays, and adaptive automation. There is need for general recommendations concerning UAVs interface development.

Background. The popularity of using virtual reality in various areas of life is growing steadily every year. The use of virtual reality in sports, including sports of the highest achievements, has both advantages and disadvantages that will be considered in this paper.

The Objective is to study main aspects of using virtual reality in sports, including the historical aspect of the method, the main current areas of using the method, the existing advantages and limitations of the method for using in sports practice, including sports of the highest achievements.

Results and conclusions of the study. It is shown using virtual reality technologies in sports has a whole range of advantages, including removing restrictions imposed by real sports: preventing sport injury; creating environmental conditions (weather, humidity, rivalry, etc.), lack of dependence on sport equipment, weather or location, and the ability to engage in hard-to-reach and expensive sports accordingly. However, there are a number of problems that make it difficult to use virtual reality in sports, in particular, using sport equipment and assessing skill transfer.

Background. The paper focuses on manipulating the mass consciousness of the audience. Traditionally, this issue has been considered as an attempt to present the advertising of a TV product as information, but within the digital age, there is a desire to present promotion of TV content as a game. However, the “non-gaming” goals of the institutions that stand behind video games and games in alternate reality may be hidden from the players and serve commercial goals.

Objective. The study focuses on identifying and describing the advantages and disadvantages of using gamification in the TV promo-discourse. The author examines examples of using games in alternative reality and also multiplayer online games in real time in order to attract the attention of films and TV series viewers, analyzes the causes of success and failure of similar projects in related fields, and also in science and business.

Design. The study is valuable for interdisciplinary approach. Analyzing the use of gamification techniques in the TV promo-discourse the author raises topical issues of media psychology, perception psychology, philosophy of video games, ethics, communicative stylistics and media stylistics.

The paper highlights philological methods designed according to the tasks of the research: communicative discursive analysis, synchronic descriptive and synchronic comparative methods. The description of the provisions and forms of persuasive communication as applied to TV promotions includes elements of logical meaning-specific analysis (i.e. argumentative analysis), and also intentional, ethical and psychological analysis. This approach helps to give an adequate description of gamification effects in TV promodiscourse.

Results. The author comes to the conclusion that the ability of game mechanics to motivate mass recepients of the TV promo discourse to watch television programs is enormous, but the viewers of the TV channels need to be critical of gamification projects: they have to understand the purposes they are framed to, and take part in projects whose non-gamer goals are merely civil without implying exploitation of the gamer. Framed to the ethical norms gamification in the TV promotion can be both an effective tool for promoting TV content, and also a way to change the social order for the better.

Conclusion.Theoretical conclusions of the study of the mass consciousness manipulation through using gamification in TV promotions can be widely used in teaching medialinguistics, speech culture, TV, philosophy of video games, humanitarian researche of video game, etc. The results of this study seem to be useful to media professionals.

Background. Presence phenomenon is aт important component of human interaction using virtual reality. Virtual reality is used actively in such spheres as Education, Research, Psychotherapy, Surgery, Entertainment and Games. The hidden part of the presence experience phenomenon deserves great interest. The researcher has to answer the following questions when conducting a research: 1. what exactly does the person experiencing the presence feel? 2. how much does a person "forget" about what is happening around them in the real world? 3. is it possible to simultaneously feel one’s presence in both worlds – real, where a person is physically present, and virtual, where a person is immersed by specific hardware and software that generate virtual reality?

The Objective of the paper is to provide a description of the subjective presence experience, to show features of presence experience types.

Design. The paper includes the review of modern research on the presence phenonmenon. The course of the study is described: conditions for experiencing the phenomenon of presence (e.g. virtual flight over the city) were designed to coincide with theoretical factors that enhance or weaken the experience of the phenomenon of presence. Following the first stage, the subjects were interviewed using structured interviews in order to systematize their subjective experience. The paper provides a qualitative analysis of the test subjects' answers. The study involved 18 people, 5 males and 13 females aged 18 to 28 years.

Results. The influence of factors contributing to the emergence of presence is reflected in the subjective experience, types of experiencing different types of presence (e.g. environmental, social, personal) were highlighted. The contradictory notions about the position of one's body, the location of other people and other components of the phenomenon of presence are shown.

Conclusion. The phenomenon of presence is a complex experience within which the perception of time, space, body, physical laws is distorted.

In this paper virtualization and simulation technologies in the context of higher mental functions in information society are observed. The category of “simulacrum” considered within the representative model (Plato) and unrepresentative model (Deleuze, Baudrillard) is considered as a key factor for the theoretical analysis of virtual reality. Virtual reality is described as a space of simulacra, special signs that, unlike signs-copies do not fix any similarity, but fix dissimilarity with reference reality generating a sequence of simulations. A problem of subjectivity is highlighted, containing the merger of the subject and simulacrum in virtual reality. Thus, staying in a real world physically, the subject transits into a virtual world mentally. There it is endowed by a new virtual body, that has nothing in common with the subject’s corporeality. There are traps for technological simulacra related to the development of phantom reality and to the possibilities of combining virtual and true reality. Nowadays, technologies are becoming such power that is capable if erasing the border between a signifier and the signified. “Virtual” events play the leading role in information space. However, they generate real consequences, again acquiring real reflections and making an endless chain of switches between the real and the virtual events. As an example of destructive simulation, the use of virtual technologies for conducting military actions or for creating and promoting news events in mass media is given. It is stated that simulacra have become an inseparable part of cultural and historical reality of information society. It is indistinguishability of virtual and real entity that is defined as a reason of transformational processes of not only the identity but also of higher mental functions.

The self-motion illusion (‘vection’) refers to a subjective phenomenon where a stationary observer experiences a compelling sense of illusory self-motion when she/ he is exposed to large moving patterns of optic flow. As a part of vestibular dysfunction the self-motion illusion is accompanied by the complex of negative symptoms: vertigo, nausea, vomiting and headache. In recent years the phenomenon of vection has attracted the attention of researchers due to the development of virtual reality systems. In such systems stationary subjects are exposed to the large moving optic flow which leads to the appearance of vection. Despite the wide range of approaches and methods of its assessing there is no generally accepted view about the psychological and psychophysiological mechanisms of its appearance. This review considers various approaches to the study of the vection illusion, methods of its evaluation and various factors affecting its severity. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of the brain activity underlying the vection perception, which was registered using the neuroimaging technique. This work contains also the analysis of the main factors influencing the vection perception such as technical features of virtual reality systems, individual characteristics of observers, cognitive rules of sensory information processing. A detailed description of psychological and psychophysiological methods allowing evaluating the vection strength is given. At the present understanding the process of the vection perception is an actual problem of theoretical and practical psychology. The experimental results may allow psychologists to solve the binding problem concerning the processes of sensory integration. As to practical application the results would help to develop new methods of counteracting the self-motion sickness for astronautics, pilots and sportsmen.

Virtual reality technology is used nowadays in various areas of science, and psychology, in particular. Successful work with virtual reality systems requires that a sense of presence emerges in the user, i.e. the subjective experience of the reality of being located in the artificially created environment and interacting with it. The lack of this experience or its insufficiency result in the interaction possibilities a virtual environment being unexploited. As a psychological phenomenon the sense of presence is caused by various psychological factors besides technological factors. In this paper, the reference literature review shows that the sense of presence is conditioned by demographic, cognitive, personality, and motivational variables. In particular, the sense of presence is dependent on differences in cognitive abilities and personal features, although in the last case the evidence is contradictory. The paper highlights a special role of cognitive control, i.e. metacognitive processes that are responsible for adjusting cognition to the context of the current task, thus emerging the sense of presence. The usage of expertise of psychological factors of the sense of presence in the development of virtual environments allowing effective user interaction is considered. The usage of psychological factors of the sense of presence as criteria for selecting users to operate in virtual environments is discussed. The directed research of various psychological factors that affect the sense of presence will not only support the development of general psychological theory of the sense of presence but also will allow to create effective solutions for fundamental and applied problems using virtual reality technology.

The paper presents the social problems of Internet addiction.

One of the primary causes of Internet addiction is a rapid increase in using modern Information Technology. Obvious changes in psychological traits of persons who deal with the computer and turning it into an object of psychological research are analysed. On the one hand, the Internet is viewed as one of the issues of the man’s trouble, on the other hand, the Internet contributes to the solution of many problems of modern man.