Vol 16, No 4 (2019)

The use of biofeedback (BFB) technology becomes relevant for professional training of musicians to achieve success in psychomotor function control. We compared two training approaches: 20-22 sessions of alpha-EEG/EMG biofeedback implication to increase the аlpha-2 power while reducing the tension of the forehead muscles and sham biofeedback training. Fifty student musicians (18-28 years old) were divided randomly by age, gender, performing specialty, and individual EEG alpha-peak frequency (IAPF) into two groups. Music performance, state anxiety, self-actualization, nonverbal creativity, coefficient of finger movement optimality (Ko) and the efficiency of the single training session (E1) were evaluated before and after for both types of courses. We calculated the change of the EEG power in the individually adjusted alpha-2 range in the Pz and the integrated EMG power of the surface muscles of the forehead in response to finger movement. Training with biofeedback improved music performance score, increased self-actualization, Ko, and E1 while reducing pre-stage anxiety. The students who received the sham biofeedback did not achieve such improvements. When using biofeedback, students with baseline low alpha-peak frequency (LF) showed a more significant increase in scores for music performance, Ko, and E1 than students with high alpha-peak frequency (HF). In LF students, the sessions without biofeedback did not change the studied parameters. In this pilot placebo-controlled study, we demonstrated that achieving success in the optimal musical performance training depends on the baseline genetically determined IAPF and feedback implication from the EEG alpha-2 power and forehead muscle tone.

The study integrates the experimental and descriptive approaches to the attitudes. The assumptions that the emotional, cognitive and behavioral components of attitudes toward personality traits, as well as the types of these attitudes mediate the selfand the Other assessments are under consideration. The study involved 314 students aged 18 to 30 years old (M = 20.23; SD = 1.59), of which 79 men (25%) and 235 women (75%). To measure attitudes toward traits, as well as the selfand the Other assessments, a list of 20 antonymic adjectives denoting personality characteristics was used. The objects of perception were young man and woman who answered the questions of the Short Dark Triad Questionnaire as an absolutely “good” or “bad” person. Using cluster analysis, different types of attitudes toward traits were highlighted within each component (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral). These types were determined by the participants’ position in relation to positive and negative traits. The attained results indicate that the subject’s self-esteem depends on the attitudes toward traits and detects different severity depending on the attitudes type. The highest self-esteem is observed in those subjects who: 1) consider that positive traits are more common than negative; 2) give highly contrast emotional ratings to positive and negative traits; 3) believe that positive traits are less controlled than negative ones. The assessment of the Other also reveals a connection with the types of the attitudes toward traits: the “good” Other is rated higher when the emotional attitudes toward traits are highly contrast, while the “bad” Other is rated higher when: 1) the negative traits are treated as more common; 2) the contrast between positive and negative traits is perceived as moderate. The results obtained open up the new perspectives for the correction of the selfand the Other assessments through the formation of attitudes toward traits.

The current article represents the results of the study of the students’ social representations of higher education analyzing their (social representations) structure and content. The total sample size is 358 Moscow secondary school and undergraduate students (average age ~ 18.3). The aim of the research is to identify the structure and content of the students’ social representations of higher education, taking into account their intragroup position in the study group. We used the method of free associations (by P. Verges) to reveal the structure of social representations and a complex of socio-psychological methods (methodological procedure for definition of informal intragroup power structure in the contact community, sociometry, referentometry) to determine the students’ integral intragroup status. The obtained associations were subjected to prototypic (rank-frequency) analysis. The results of the research show that the cores of the social representations of higher education of the students of different intragroup status categories differ according to the number of elements and their content characteristics. It was revealed that the social representations of the undergraduate students of different status categories seemed to be more consistent in comparison to secondary school students due to the smaller “distance” to higher education as an “object”. We also revealed the differences in the significance and emotional rating of representations core elements depending on the student status categories.

The problems of the organization and functioning of post-event cinema discourse are discussed in the article. Post-event discourse is shaped by the viewers and represents their response statements in a communicative interaction with the movie; it reflects the processes of perception and understanding of the film by the audience. It is discussed that if there is a real event underlying the film, the film itself becomes a post-event discourse, forming or reinterpreting the ideas about what happened depending on the cultural and historical context. The results of an empirical study that implements a case study methodology are presented. A thematic analysis of the post-event Internet discourse, expressed in the statements about a particular film (“T-34”), has been carried out. A thematic map that revealed the structure of the post-event cinema discourse and its simplified versions, due to the genre features of the film has been developed. It is shown that viewers not only interpret the plot of the film, but also rethink the events behind it, express the effects of influence, raise topics for discussion that are not directly related to the film. The structure of post-event discourse changes depending on the characteristics of the audience. It has been revealed that the significant part of the audience perceived the film in accordance with the original function of cinema as “entertainment”. This determined both the peculiarities of its understanding and the effects of the impact, mainly emotional. Another part of the audience discovered the cognitive implications of the film and demonstrated a more complex structure of post-event discourse organization; understanding the film in a broader context contributed to the comprehension and actualization of additional themes. It is assumed that the unfolding post-event discourse in the process of communicative interaction of the viewer with the film contributes to the formation of discursive reality.

The article presents the results obtained through the study of the multimodal segment within the Moodle-based training course in terms of its specific features and affordances for creating an innovative system of vocationally oriented foreign language teaching in nonlinguistic Master’s degree programmes. There is a need to research the functionality of the e-course semiotically different constituents when they co-occur and specify their contribution to the efficient presentation and perception of the learning content in digitally supported language classroom, which makes the research relevant. It envisaged identifying a set of multimodal resources and elements within the e-course, examining the image - text relations in terms of logico-semantics, specifying the teaching properties and affordances of such multicode combinations and assessing their learning effect through the students’ grade report as well as their feedback on the satisfaction with the multimedia learning content. The obtained results confirm that the e-course multimodal resources and elements derive their synergistic effect in terms of meaning and function from the complex interaction of the different modes constituting them. The digital nature of the multimodal learning content provides it with a set of specific properties such as multimedia, interactivity, nonlinear information flow, informativeness and gamification that when apply in teaching may contribute to creating effective online vocationally oriented foreign language learning environments. The specification of text - image combination patterns in formal and semantic terms and teaching affordances of their non-verbal constituents in online language classroom adds novelty to this paper.

The article is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the birth of Dr. habil. in Psychology, Professor A.I. Krupnov. It analyzes the continuity and achievements of scientific research on differential psychology in Russian science. Advantages of A.I. Krupnov’s psychological researches and the employees of Psychological Institute of Russian Academy of Education are revealed. The man of the year developed a holistic conceptual foundation of the personality traits’ formation, combining the interaction of direct-sensory and conscious components of human activities. Theoretically grounded and practically demanded aspects of the activity of person’s self-regulation were presented in A.I. Krupnov’s integral concept. Along with article author’s ideas about the regulatory experience of the person providing independence and conscious self-regulation in the process of the organization and implementation of activity are considered. Reconstruction of the appeal to human experience while studying its psychological characteristics in the regulatory context combines the interaction of valuable, reflexive, operational, communicative and habitually-activated components of the activities’ organization and implementation. A person acquires the ability to set tasks through regulatory experience. He chooses them from among those imposed by the environment and generates new tasks independently, and then consistently achieves their successful solution.

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