2022. vol. 19. No. 1

The temporal dynamics of intellectual abilities of 3590 first-year students (17.6 ± 1.0 years) from different university faculties were investigated. It was found that in the cohorts of young people tested in the period 2002–2012 in comparison with the decade of 1991-2001, the changes in IQ depend on gender, a field chosen for study at the university and the IQ specificity, i.e. level of verbal, arithmetic, visual-spatial abilities and memory. The Flynn effect is found for the general IQ of math students, while inversion of this effect is observed for humanities students. The heterogeneity of the Flynn effect due to IQ testing methods is manifested by an increase in the arithmetic component of intelligence when comparing the period 2001–2012 years from 1991–2001, but by a decrease in short-term memory. Math students were characterized by an increase in all components of intelligence with the exception of memory; engineering students demonstrated an increase in verbal and arithmetic components, but a decrease in short-term memory; and humanities students showed a decrease in both verbal IQ and short-term memory. The obtained results of the analysis of intellectual abilities in children born in 1974–1996 suggest that the specifics of temporal dynamics of IQ may be due to changes in the education system and the socio-economic status of the family that occurred in Russia during the period of Perestroika in society and the intensive development of information technologies.

Research indicate that the massive transition of educational institutions fully or partially to distance learning format is associated in students with complaints about difficulties in learning, decrease in effectiveness and interest. The aim was to build a predictive model of psychological (well-being, educational motivation, pandemic anxiety) and digital (user activity, digital competence, attitude to technology) predictors of decreased academic satisfaction, competence, and engagement among students during the digitalization of education in the time of pandemic. In December 2020, 220 students from the sophomore (2nd) to the last (6th) year aged 18 to 33 were asked about their learning difficulties and perceived administrative support during the lockdown in spring 2020; academic satisfaction, competence and dedication before the pandemic and now; life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions; educational motivation; pandemic anxiety; anxiety due to the transition to distance learning and due to violation of privacy and security online; user and mixed activity; digital competence; attitude to technology; wish for digitalization of education in the future. According to the results, among students, the pandemic situation led to a decrease in academic satisfaction, subjective competence and engagement, and caused moderate learning difficulties. More pronounced learning difficulties during a pandemic were found in students with higher level of negative emotions, lower integrated learning motivation, higher anxiety due to the transition to distance learning and due to a violation of security and privacy online. The decrease in academic satisfaction, competence and dedication was maximal among students with a lower level of positive emotions, higher rates of amotivation at the university, anxiety due to the transition to distance learning and violation of privacy and security, and a lower wish for digitalization in education. The decrease in competence and engagement was more pronounced among students with a high level of technophilia, which can be explained by the fact that such students are more often distracted from their studies online.

The article presents the results of an empirical research, which objective was to study the relationship between various components of intercultural competence and self-efficacy of teachers working with students from other cultures. Inter­cultural competence is understood as a complex multi-component concept that includes four basic components: intercultural interest, intercultural stability, lack of ethnocentrism, and management of intercultural interaction. In a situation of direct interaction with representatives of other cultures, in addition to self-assessment of intercultural competence, it is also important to take into account the behavioral choices in a ­situation of intercultural communication. Thus, the study was based on the hypothesis that all four abovementioned components predict teacher’s self-efficacy. At the same time, the relationship between the intercultural competence of a teacher in the form of behavioral preferences and self-efficacy is mediated by the components of self-assessment of intercultural competence. Russian teachers from Belgorod and Sverdlovsk Regions took part in the study (N = 1261). The instruments for the study included Integrative Questionnaire of Intercultural Com­petence (IQIC), test of situational judgments "Measuring the Intercultural Competence of a Teacher" (TSJ-MICT) and Questionnaire "Self-efficacy of a teacher working with foreign students". IQIC is a self-report questionnaire that allows measuring the intercultural competence of a teacher. TSJ-MICT is a set of cases, which helps to identify the behavioral features of the intercultural competence of teachers. Questionnaire "Self-efficacy of a teacher in working with foreign students" is a scale used to assess the respondents confidence in how successfully they work with students from other cultures. An analysis of the study results shows that the four components of intercultural competence predict teacher’s self-efficacy in a multicultural environment.

The present article attempts to substantiate the increased attention to the measurement and development of students' social-emotional skills. Social-emotional skills are defined as individual characteristics resulting from biological predispositions and environmental factors and conceptually independent of cognitive skills while being associated with social well-being. The article outlines an important aspect of these skills, i.e. their developmental potency. The theoretical framework of the article is M. Foucault's concept of a disciplinary society, linking the collection of data on the latent characteristics of an individual and the strengthening of control over him as a “productive body”. The development of social and emotional skills, in turn, is seen as a way to produce public good within the neoliberal paradigm. The authors point to the complexity of modern views on the individual as a political subject endowed with agency and a sense of responsibility. It is assumed that the achievement of success requires the development of a set of essential skills in individuals, which implies there exists a social demand for them. The article addresses the adjacent problem of social inequality. The article formulates two functions of social and emotional skills development, namely, the disciplinary function and the function of mitigating social inequality. Finally, the article analyzes the most influential frameworks of social-emotional skills and reflects on their formation and evolution. The authors aim to engage the psychological community in the discussion of the process of formation and evaluation of socio-emotional skills in order to bring a more subtle understanding of human behavior.

This study is based on the assumption that significant and memorable nostalgic experience (memories that actualize the experience of happy, pleasant, blessed moments of the past) among adherents of country and urban life differ in their content. The data was collected through online survey. The final sample consisted of 172 respondents: the adherents of megalopolises life (n = 57), the admirers of country life with no plans to move (n = 70) and former townspeople (n = 45). The results of the study confirmed the hypothesis that significant nostalgic memories differ thematically. The nostalgic memories of country world are less significant for adherents of megalopolises (U = 2328.0, p = .002), (H = 9.987, p = .007). With a high degree of probability, we can talk about the correlation of nostalgic memories entitled as "country world" and "me in my childhood and youth" (rs = .279, p = .000), as well as "country world" and "music/ songs" (rs = .158, p = .037). The assumption about the greater sovereignty of suburban residents and its connection with nostalgic memories was partially confirmed; in general, the results allow us to identify such a trend. According to our expectations, no difference in life satisfaction indicators was detected between the groups of the adherents of megalopolis and country life. Life satisfaction indicators is lower in the group of the country life lovers with no plans to move (U = 1335.0, p = .001). Both findings correlate with the results of our earlier studies. The problematic issues of studying implicit life meanings using tests and the prospective of qualitative methodology tools are outlined. Our findings indicate the importance of further exploration of nostalgic experience of former townspeople as underlying experience of their lifeworld.

The paper presents the results of a study of aggressiveness and the socio-perceptual image of the police and government officials in the minds of adolescents. Our study is based on a survey of 7468 young people between the ages of 16 and 19, of whom 42% were men (2759) and 58% were women (3804). The survey was conducted in eight Russian regions. We used an original methodology to assess individuals' perceptions of their social environment, the "80 adjectives", as well as a positive perception coefficient developed on its basis. The analysis of the data showed that negative perceptions of the police were positively related to the aggressiveness of the young audience, youth's perception of government officials showed no significant correlation with studied psychological parameters. At the same time, the strongest relationship negative perception formed with reactive aggression, arising as a response to external aggression or threat. It was also found that the negative perception of law enforcement agencies in 1996 and 2016 did not change in a meaningful way and, therefore, is characterized by a high degree of inertia and stability. Also, the entrenched thesis in psychology about the influence of family wholeness on personality aggression did not find confirmation in the study. At the same time, adolescents raised by two parents demonstrate a lower level of shyness, and thus can more successfully overcome socialization difficulties. The analysis of exogenous factors of aggression showed a correlation between the aggression of the respondents and the size of the city they live in. Young people in large and densely populated cities are more prone to aggression than their peers in the countryside.

Abstract words, due to the absence of material referents, are more difficult to learn and process than concrete ones (the concreteness effect). Here, we have investigated this effect by assessing the outcomes of concrete and abstract word learning provided by meaningful textual or graphical contexts. Five tasks including Free recall, Reco­gnition, Lexical decision, Definition, and multiple-choice Semantic judgment tasks were used to assess the success of the acquisition of newly learnt words at lexical and semantic levels. Within-group analysis revealed the concreteness effect in both experimental groups. However, it was more pronounced after a graphical than a textual presentation (in three tasks vs one) supporting the crucial role of the non-verbal (imagery) system in learning of concrete words. Between-group analysis showed more accurate Recall and Definition of concrete nouns as well as better performance of both types of words in terms of Definition quality in the graphical group in comparison with the textual one. However, participants from the textual group recognised novel abstract words better than the other learners. Interestingly, only one between-group difference that was found for abstract words in the Definition task (definition quality) reached significance after the Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons. The results show that (1) concrete and abstract word processing may have partly distinct cognitive mechanisms, and (2) visual associations may play a crucial role in the semantic acquisition, especially for concrete words.

Here we report on the results of an experimental study investigating “who?” emerges as a leader in the context of male group cooperation and “how?” they do that. The study was designed based on the iterated Public Goods Game, played face-to-face in groups composed of four male strangers. The game involved interactions both with and without communication to allow the assessment of individual cooperative strategies, leadership potential, and individual features of positive nonverbal expressiveness during interactions. Along with the individual behavioural characteristics we have addressed personality traits (the Big Five) and an oxytocin receptor gene polymorphism (OXTR: SNP rs53576; A/G) as putative markers of individual sociability. Our results revealed that emergent leaders most often employed the strategy of unconditional cooperation (“altruism”) and were characterized by enhanced positive facial expressiveness and extraversion compared to non-leaders. However, a fraction of emergent leaders (25%) turned out to be occasional free-riders (“cheaters”). Their distinctive features were the highest scores on extraversion, exaggerated activity in negotiations, and over-expression of positive nonverbal elements. Given the high efficiency of leaders-cheaters’ behaviour, we consider this result as the evidence for supernormal stimuli functioning in humans. Moreover, leaders-cheaters were characterized by a specific allelic frequency of OXTR rs53576 (heterozygosity: AG). The homozygous GG variant of this SNP is argued to be associated with prosociality, and the AA, on the contrary, with poor sociability. The heterozygous variant (AG) probably is a compromise that enables its carriers to successfully combine high social skills with anti-social behavior (free-riding). This finding supports existing evidence on the role of OXTR rs53576 in human social behaviour.

The heuristic of information processing fluency plays an important role in making judgments. Some sources of processing fluency can be relevant or irrelevant to the content of a judgment. In this study, we aim to check whether individuals can distinguish different sources of fluency or fluency has a general effect on judgments. We used an artificial grammar learning paradigm (AGL) and tested the effects of different fluency sources (grammaticality and perceptual noise) on the judgment of grammaticality or of subjective ease of reading. It was found that both grammaticality and perceptual noise affected grammaticality judgements: the grammatical and the less noisy strings were evaluated more often as grammatical. However, only the perceptual noise affected judgments of subjective ease of reading. The results obtained provide evidence that fluency may contribute to the effects of implicit learning. It is possible that the processing fluency heuristic is the additional factor of judgement in the lack of explicit knowledge. Perhaps, perceptual noise provided almost complete explicit information for judgment of ease of reading; hence there was no need for additional heuristics. Another possible explanation is that perceptual fluency sources affect the early stages of information processing in a mandatory manner, unlike the conceptual ones. Overall, results are better explained by the non-specificity fluency hypothesis supporting the impossibility to distinguish between different fluency sources.

The article reviews the theory by M. Gra­ziano, presented in his book “Consciousness”  and the “Social Brain2. Its novelty and essential features of the conceptual identification of consciousness are determined. Comparison of the main provisions of the attention schema theory with a number of other concepts of consciousness is carried out. The author's composition of the foundations of the theory is quite representative and covers neuroscientific, cognitive, clinical, psychological and other scientific data. The basic concept in Graziano's theory is "attention" in its neuroscientific interpretation. The author sees eight essential points of similarity between attention and consciousness: purposefulness (intentionality) of consciousness as an equivalent of directionality, that is, focusing attention; a single substance or source of consciousness ("I" as a brain function) and attention (selective function of the brain); selectivity in the manifestations of both consciousness and attention; graduation, i.e. distinct differentiation: center-periphery in the work of consciousness and attention; equal connection of consciousness and attention with the processes of memory, perception, affect, thinking, etc.; equal connection with action and behavior; equal "immersion depth" in the information space; impossibility of consciousness without attention. The difference between this identification of consciousness and those previously proposed in classical and modern cognitive psychology of consciousness consists in a new structural design of attention, which allows the author to see a number of advantages of his theory in comparison with other informational and social theories of consciousness. This, in particular, is the prospect of overcoming the dualism known since the time of Descartes, which has been named a “hard problem” in the modern science of consciousness, as well as the reciprocity of individual and socio-perceptual consciousness substantiated by the author. The categories of information and representation are equally important for the author's provisions on the corresponding processes of modeling and shaping consciousness, but the functions of representation are not clearly defined. The new concept of consciousness enriches the contemporary studies of consciousness, tackling one of the most difficult problems of the contemporary science.

The purpose of the review of foreign literature is to analyze the concepts of solidarity in psychology and related sciences with a focus on the role of media. Solidarity is considered as a complex socio-psychological construct, including positive identity, mindset for cooperation, empathy, an image of a positive future, a plan of joint actions, trained skills of social assistance, etc. The core of the construct is a group identity, through its valence (positive or negative), the vector of unity-separation of people is set. Solidarity is considered not only as a resource of group dynamics, but also of personal development. It can be positive ("for something"), and negative ("against someone"), depending on the valence of the identity that is formed or supported by the media. The role of media in the processes of solidarity of the population is not always realized and indicated by researchers. It is shown that in times of crisis, the mass media can provoke infodemia, increase anxiety, stress, inadequate search behavior in people, and stimulate negative solidarity. The psychological preconditions of infodemia are the need for control, attempts to maintain a positive identity, and group protection. Similar mechanisms work in the development of solidarity, the need for which is actualized, but not used by the media. The role of social networks in the consolidation of groups is underestimated: virtual weak and latent connections are strengthened and can be used to inform and conduct training in quarantine conditions. Official media’s tasks in times of natural disasters should include science-based education, the development and strengthening of solidarity attitudes in society in close contact with academic institutions.

This paper provides an overview of studies examining the relationship between psychological characteristics and properties of voice. The article presents a historical overview of studies in this field, the main audio characteristics of speech used for voice analysis in modern researches (pitch, intensity and speed), research data on the acoustic and prosodic characteristics of emotions, intentions and personality traits (leadership qualities, charisma, Big Five personality traits). It is shown that negative emotions are recognized by voice better than positive ones, anger and sadness are most accurately recognized. The audio correlates of such measurements of emotions as valence and activation are considered. Acoustic-prosodic characteristics are described not only for basic emotions (anger, happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise), but also of emotions that are of a less intense nature - irritation, resignation, indifference. Just like emotional speech, nonverbal vocalizations have a combination of acoustic properties, which can also be predicted based on their physical properties. It is shown that the perception of charismatic speech is due to a combination of prosodic and lexical properties of speech, and the role of auditory characteristics in the recognition of charisma is lower than in the recognition of emotions, where voice characteristics play a more prominent role than lexical content. When evaluating the Big Five traits using expert assessments, extraversion was found to have the largest number of significant correlations with acoustic-prosodic and auditory traits. Automatic personality and emotion recognition (using machine learning and neural networks) is a research area, where we can see the burst of empirical studies. Computer technologies assure a high degree of accuracy in personality prediction, but such studies are rarely deeply theoretically grounded. In conclusion, the need for theoretical understanding of the empirical results obtained is emphasized.