Background. The paper is dedicated to the psychological description of the musical movement method as a particular practice of esthetic education. The practice of the musical movement (MM) was originally created as an artistic one and only gradually began to acquire the features of the pedagogical system. Over time, works appeared where attempts were made to psychological understanding of the processes taking place in the bosom of this practice: changes, transformations of music perception under the influence of movement, expressive movement, etc. However, a more complete reflection of the psychological content of the MM method was not accomplished.

The Objective of the research is to provide a psychological description of the musical movement method as a specific practice of aesthetic education and to explain the notion of MM as a psychotechnical method.

Background. The paper shows that the subject matter of the MM method is not so much the movement as such, its performing part, but the internal, psychological aspect of experiencing and meaning production. Achieving the unity of internal and external, experience and movement, motivation and action, meaning and gesture are the basis of the main goals of musical movement. Musical-motor exercises are considered to be the main tool of the method with which you can learn the movement and comprehend the images of musical-motor forms. It is shown how the musical-motor form accumulates the experience of experiencing music and reflects different semantic levels of musical content: from onomatopoeia and rhythmic imitation, modeling of emotional intonation to the existential layer of music.

Results. The goal of the artwork in mastering the MM method coincides with the pedagogical task: to achieve openness of the personality, its deep, genuine involvement in dialogue with music through movement and gesture. The task set in the musical movement is to give a motor response to sounding music, which affects the motivational-value sphere of the human individual. Classes in the music movement are unique situations that simulate the processes of creativity and are aimed at developing the capacity for creative realization.

Conclusion. The musical-motor exercise is a unique tool that allows one to learn the movement and comprehend the images of musical-motor forms. The musical-motor exercise accumulates the experience of experiencing music. Due to the perception of music in its full shape and form and penetration into the existential world of music, human feelings begin to achieve the sublime multidimensional level in everyday life.

Background. In recent decades, the living conditions and development of children have changed significantly. The group of children that is open to the new and is sensitive  enough is the group of children of early and preschool age since they have been formed and developed in completely different conditions than previous generations. The new childhood is taking shape and exists in the material, information, communicative, etc. environment that adults shape.

The Objective is to consider some general trends of the information environment of modern childhood and to fix a number of its contradictions and paradoxes.

Design.The paper attempts to determine the characteristics of modern preschool childhood through analyzing child information environment. Based on the analysis of the market for modern toys, books and films, the author states some paradoxes of the current socio-cultural situation. One of them consists in the fact that a significant part of the extensive information products for children is not designed for the age characteristics of the target audience. Another paradox lies in the fact that the increased demand for the child mental development is  combined with an excessively careful attitude to their physical security and independence. Particular attention is paid to computer technology in early and preschool childhood.

Results.The identified features of modern children in connection with the characteristics of the child subculture are discussed. Among them there are the underdevelopment of large and small motor skills, impaired speech development, lack of imagination, communication difficulties, lack of independence and self-organization. Having a high level of awareness, mental development and technical literacy, children still remain passive, dependent on adults and external circumstances.

Findings.The author concludes that the attitudes of adults to early development, which is understood as “learning,” inhibits the development of the child’s personality and brings about lack of motivation. Attempting to accelerate intellectual development inepts and sometimes blocks the development of the child’s personality. With all the ambiguity of the concept of "personality", the key defining its characteristics are self-reliance, independence, and responsibility. It is these characteristics that are most affected in modern children.

Background. The paper provides the results of studying gender views on parenthood. For efficient performance of the parent role the system of the subject’s ideas about the phenomenon of “parenthood” and its specific features, as well as personal features aimed at the effective performance of parental functions by both women (mothers) and men (fathers) are laid emphasis on.

The Objective is to describe the pilot experimental research focused on males and females’ attitude to parenthood. The hypothesis of the study is an assumption about gender-specific attitude to parenthood in males and females in relation to the parental roles and functions that are eventually actualized in children.  Females are focused on personal relationships with a child and emotionally coloured attitudes towards them, while for males mostly active forms of parenting are typical.

Design. The first stage of theoretical understanding of the issue included the literature review of the foreign and Russian national psychologists focused on the psychology of parenthood (A. Adler, E. Badinter, D. Winnicott, M. Marcons, M. Mead, D. Peynes, S. Fanti, E. Erickson; T.V. Andreeva, K.N. Belogay, N.N. Vasyagina, A.I. Zakharova, O.A. Karabanova, S.Yu. Meshcheryakova, R.V. Ovcharova, V.A. Ramikh, Yu.A. Tokareva, G.G. Filippova, L.B. Schneider, etc.). The second stage of the research was focused on the study of gender-specific ideas about parenthood.

Results. Based on the analysis of the existing approaches to understanding the phenomenon of “parenthood”, we defined it as a complex personal education including positive affective manifestations of the subject in relation to children shaped in the process of his interaction with the child and having a positive impact on the entire harmonious development and education of children. The survey data showed that the respondents expressed gender-specific attitudes to parenthood. In particular, the discrepancy lies in the perceptions of males and females of the “ideal parent” and their parental roles.

Conclusion.The study proved the presence of gender features in the ideas of parenthood. To optimize the level and content of ideas about parenting will contribute to further rendering psychological support for the family.

Background. According to various sources, about half of the world's population speaks two or more languages on different levels. The steady growth of bilingual and multilingual populations through migration and learning of foreign languages, on the one hand, and the real threat of indigenous languages extinction, on the other hand, put the comprehensive study of bilingualism and multilingualism in a number of important social issues and interdisciplinary scientific problems.

Objective. The paper aims to analyze and summarize the results obtained in the research of the bilingualism impact on cognitive processes and individual characteristics in order to identify the possible advantages of bilingualism and the difficulties associated with them.

Results. The phenomenon of Russian national bilingualism and its specific features in some republics of the Russian Federation is considered. A variety of socio-cultural contexts in which bilingualism and multilingualism are studied justifying the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the research issues is presented. The theoretical and analytical review of the research of bilingualism influence on cognitive processes, personal characteristics and relationships with ethno-cultural identity is carried out. The areas in which bilingualism can provide benefits are considered, and the risks associated with the possession of several languages for the individual and for society are analyzed. The results of the bilingualism influence on cognitive processes and personal characteristics are contradictory and are determined by the attitudes of researchers and some factors and additional variables that are difficult to control due to various methodological problems. The necessity of interdisciplinary interaction in research the impact of multilingualism on various individual and social processes is shown.

Conclusion. Bilingualism and multilingualism are neither an advantage of the cognitive functioning and personal development of the subject, nor for society. There are additional conditions determined both by the individual situation of development and by the socio-cultural context. If taken into account they can help to reduce individual and social risks of bilingualism and multilingualism and stimulate its positive impact on the individual and society.

Introduction. Interest in the issues of spirituality, moral background is objectively determined by the transformations in all spheres of life and human activity in recent decades, including fundamental changes in the value-based system.

The Objective is to describe an experimental program of studying the level of spiritual and moral education in children of preschool age. Based on the analysis of the data and considering the spirituality and morality in children as a complicated integrative education, we identify intellectual, cognitive, value-based, motivational and behavioural components. The main hypothesis of the study is the assumption of the dependence of the spiritual and moral level on the determined systematic work of the spiritual and moral potential of the person, their culture and valued at each age stage. The basic levels of ontogenesis are emphasized.

Procedure. The first stage of the research included analysis of the works in the field of «spirituality» and «morality», which allowed us to determine the specific features of spiritual and moral education of the 5-year-old children and to design a program of experimental study. The second stage was based on the comprehensive program of experimental research, i.e. a system of test methods aimed at studying the selected components of the spiritual and moral education. The population consisted of 90 five-year-old children.

Findings. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experimental data obtained at the third stage of our study showed that a high level of spiritual and moral education is recorded only in 21% of the respondents. The majority of respondents (57%) scored the average level of spiritual and moral education. 22% of the respondents score a low level of spiritual and moral education.

Conclusion. The study showed that less than one third of the respondents demonstrated a high level of spiritual and moral education. The majority of preschool children did not know about the spiritual and moral norms of social behaviour, and also they lacked regular rules of behaviour, which suggests that the majority of the research participants did not correspond to age-related opportunities and require targeted psychological and pedagogical assistance.

Background. Connected with the changes that have taken place in the labour market in the last decades, psychologists are faced with the scientific and practical task of improving vocational guidance work with high school students using new programs to develop their personal and professional identity.

Objective. Based on the epigenetic theory of development the objective is to generalize and systematize the theoretical and empirical studies of personal and professional identity in adolescents aged 15–16, establish new empirical facts, verify the results already obtained and develop practical recommendations for improving vocational guidance counseling for high school students.

Design. Some features of the relationship between personal and professional identity of high school students aged 15–16 were studied. First of all, the relationship of personal identity with age was studied. In the course of the research, such methods as studying personal identity of D. Marcia modified by V.R. Orestova and O.A. Karabanova and methods of professional identity of A.A. Azbel and A.G. Gretsov were used. The methods were disseminated among 158 respondents, and the questionnaires filled by 132 respondents turned out to be suitable for processing.

Research Results. Several hypotheses were put forward: 1. The level of personal identity development is significantly associated with the age of high school students. 16-year-old 10th-graders outnumber 15-year-old 9th-graders. Between the age groups, significant differences were identified (p = 0.048), so the hypothesis is confirmed. 2. The majority of 15-year-old 9th-graders (63.3%) and 16-year-old 10th-graders (62.2%) who go to Moscow schools have a status of a moratorium. The hypothesis is confirmed. 3. For the age of 15-16 years, the dynamics of professional identity is absent. The hypothesis is confirmed. The differences between adolescents of 15 and 16 years in this parameter are not statistically significant (p = 0.993). 4. The level of personal and professional identity development is higher in females than in males. The hypothesis was not confirmed as the differences between females and males are not significant (p = 0.122), (p = 0.928).

Conclusion. As a result of generalization of theoretical and empirical data, an author's approach to improving vocational guidance work with high school students is proposed.

The paper discusses the role of the movement in the process of shaping the personality, its importance as a mechanism for personality development is considered. The issue of the movement has always occupied a central place in Russian psychology. However, subsequently the movement began to be considered primarily as an executive action in human life. The role of movement in personality development can vary depending on the level it occupies in the hierarchical structure of activity, and also on the type of movement, its character, and the way it is constructed. Under certain conditions, the movement can express the attitude of the subject to the surrounding world and people.

Many foreign and Russian psychologists point to a special place of the postural tonic component of the motor movement, the posture in personal regulation. The posture reflects his/her personal attitudes, the system of relationships, and, above all, the emotional attitude or emotional assessment of the current situation, the interest in the actions performed. Mastering the tonic level of motor management is based on the emotional regulation, so the ability to regulate one’s own pose is an important stage in the personality development.

Posture tonic regulation of motor movements in humans reveals a qualitatively different character than in animals, this being due to the person’s facing the task of mastering his’her posture, arbitrary retention of the body in one or another position. Maintaining a vertical posture requires constant activity at an arbitrary and involuntary level of mental regulation. Mastering the posture of an unstable equilibrium presupposes the emergence of the «I» and is the last stage of the development. The way a person solves the motor task of maintaining the vertical position of the body reflects his/her specific personal strategy or attitude.

The paper analyses such polysemantic terms as “subject”, “individual”, “personality”, and which form sincretic notions, e.g. “subjectivity of personality”, “multisubjectivity of personality”, etc.

The author claims that he was unable to find in the works of other authors meaningful connections between the concepts of «subject» and «personality». The concept of «subject» is used in such a wide meaning that its content potential is close to zero. It highlights the complexity of understanding the subject, and provides evidence of the difficulties that the author finds in the works of the leading philosophers and psychologists who are concerned with the issue of personality. As a result, the author concludes that the analysis of the different forms of reflexivity and, their base practices are the theory of psychology of the subject.

The second term of the triad – the individual or the individuality, is both the subject and the subject matter and objective of an infinite number of studies. At the same time the concepts of «subject» and «personality» are not congruent to the concept of «individual», although many attempts to define or describe the personalityare repelled by the notion of individual. The phenomenon of personality expresses a rather late result of human development.

The interpretation of these terms by G.G. Shpet, S.L. Rubinshtein, B.M. Teplov, A.N. Leontiev, etc. is refurbished. The author believes the main issue of psychological research is personality. On the ontological plane,there are two notions of personality: down — to the subject — to a function or a collection of functions; and up — to the personality — to an ideal, to the limit of self-construction, to spirituality and freedom.

The aim of the article is to introduce the concept of personality and character which is based on the activity theory approach by A.N.Leontiev. The introductory part of the work gives a short history of characterology whose analysis reveals apparent uncertainty in understanding the subject matters of character psychology and personality psychology. They are directly (character) or indirectly (personality) confined to a person’s psychic individuality. However, the specific content of this individuality appears to be so broad and various that characterology starts losing its clear contours while personality does not find any generally accepted definition. In the framework of the developed concept, personality is regarded as a structure of life meanings while character is seen as an instrumental level which accepts life meanings for performance and implements them in human actions. Nonidentity of the two studied formations is shown: they are different in terms of content, function in human psychics, units of structure, general construction and genesis. Some examples are given based on the data of ethnic psychology. They show how a sense formation which is the same for different nations is realized through unequal characterological techniques. On the other hand, a few sense formations can be expressed by a single action or stereotype. In conclusion problems of correlation between personality and character and the source of their generation are discussed.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of spiritual determination of character development in adolescence. On the basis of the experimental research of spiritual sphere and the degree of a character harmony of today’s students, the author allocates the psychological laws of influencing the spiritual orientation for the process of character developments in adolescents. The experimental research has shown that spiritual orientation and character harmony are mutually influenced. However, the spiritual potential does not always positively correlate with character harmony as because the process of character harmonization does not appear linear, but cyclic with of rise and fall periods. The fall periods are accompanied by expressed disharmony of character and promotes social psychological personality maladjustment. Conditioned by steady spiritual orientation, spiritual self-development promotes character harmonization through overcoming personal spiritual crises. Continuous moral struggle against imperfection conditioned, the personality faces gradual character harmonization according to the spiritual ideal.

Spiritually and creative activity promotes activation of psychological mechanisms of character harmonization in adolescents. The basic directions of optimization of the education system is creating psychological conditions of spirituality and moral improvement, saturation of teaching and educational programs by spiritual and creative contents.

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.

An important feature of the present stage of human knowledge development is the introducing psychology in the spiritual context. An interest in the scientific community to such spiritual and psychological realities as subjectivity, individuality, personality, “spiritual I” consciousness, conscience, human morality is increasing. These concepts are united by the fact that they do not fit in the objectively oriented areas of psychology that study the general properties and regularities of mental functioning. To consider them properly we have to differentiate the diverse scientific types and processes for obtaining psychological knowledge.

The paper presents a historical and methodological review of studies on the problem of human psychology. We identified and analyzed methodological orientations of psychological human anthropology: theocentric, and sociocentric personcentric. For each of them we found certain philosophical and ideological concepts that define the fundamental principle of human in man, which were fruitfully absorbed by psychology and allowed to deploy the relevant areas of research.

Correlation of sociocentric and personcentric scientific approaches allows to raise the issue of insufficient research of theocentric methodology for the problem of human psychology. Psychological anthropology is an implementation of theocentric methodology at the present stage of rational psychological knowledge development.

Psychological anthropology has become a new methodological platform endowed with considerable heuristic potential.

The content of psychological anthropology is a description of the phenomena of the inner world of a human individual, revealing the bases and conditions for the development of subjective reality in the ontogeny. The article defines the basic categories and formulated the basic provisions of the psychological anthropology. We justified a new interpretation of the principle of development in psychology. The results of structural and content analysis of human subjectivity, normative models, marginal quality, and the superordinate form of human existence are presented.

The soul concept has been forbidden to use in the academic psychological literature for over a hundred years. It was replaced (suppressed) by the concept of “psyche”, “consciousness”, “self-esteem”, etc. The paper raises the issue of the need to reconsider the concept of human soul as the fundamental basis of human mental activity. We emphasize the multidimensional concept of soul, a number of traditional fields of theoretical and applied psychology the directly being attributed to it, for example, the study of thinking, memory, perception, sensations, emotions, etc. We discovered that among the accepted meanings of the soul (more than ten listed in the paper) only one is known to fall out of the academic and psychological requirements, namely understanding the soul in terms of “spiritual part of human beings”. The fundamental conclusion consists in the fact that the soul properly never escaped the issues of academic psychology. On the contrary, it has been in the focus of scholars. In order to differentiate between the competence of psychology and theology we propose a distinction between “inner” and “outer” psychic manifestations. Within such a divide, the “outer” side will face the entire material world almost directly and entirely meet the requirements of the subject matter of science, whereas the “inner” side is connected with psychology through the reality, habitually referred to as spirituality, which in addition to theological interpretations can be deemed in terms of moral and philosophical value sphere and intelligible reason of human existence.

This approach allowed us to consider the issue of “spiritual” and “personal” relations, to establish relationships between personality psychology and the religious and secular approaches. It is shown that without taking into account the methodological correlation with these approaches the psychological category is reduced to simply identifying personal individual features, and motivational and volitional performance.

An attempt to create a psychological portrait of M. Lomonosov is undertaken. The phenomenon of M. Lomonosov’s personality as a creator and a great scholar, who served his people and the supreme power, is revealed.

The main stages of the life and work of M. Lomonosov, the outstanding national scholar, are presented. The features of his personality and outlook are shown. M. Lomonosov’s contribution to the development of scientific psychological thought in Russia is disclosed.

The author of the paper raises the issue concerning the need for a more profound theoretical and methodological foundations of health psychology as a new developing area of psychological knowledge, with special emphasis on the research potential of the cultural activity paradigm. The model of psychological research of health, based on the general psychological ideas of L.S.Vygotsky, A.N.Leontiev, S.L.Rubinstein, P.Y.Galperin and others, is proposed.

Human health as a higher mental function is the base of the model. Levels of regulating the individual’s interaction with the outer world are marked out. The formation of a coherent and consistent system of functioning of the levels is considered as a basis of general and psychological health of a person. According to the author the basic mental disorders of a man are connected with the change of the initial conditions of mental regulation (which were developed in the process of biological evolution) and subsequent change of the role of psyche in the conditions of social life. The author suggests a hypothesis of the connection between psychosomatic disorders and the mechanism dysfunction of mental image-based regulation of behavior. The existence of a close connection between physical and social health of a man is stated. The notion of “social physiology” is introduced.