Vol 22, No 3 (2025)

The purpose of the article is to compare the features of a normative situation and laughter as a response to a humorous stimulus. The prerequisite for this task is the fact that most researchers recognize the social nature of laughter, suggesting a correspondence between the social structure and the structure of laughter. The authors note that, to date, no unified theory of laughter, accepted by the majority of researchers, has been developed. For this reason, the study was conducted using materials from the classical works by M.M. Bakhtin, H. Bergson, V.Y. Propp, and other scientists. As the theoretical research method, the authors chose structuraldialectical analysis. This method involves identifying oppositions in the structure of the examined phenomenon and explaining the logic of transformations or changes in the object as a logic of possibilities. The structural-dialectical analysis of laughter in comparison with the normative situation has revealed that both the structure of the normative situation and the structure of laughter contain natural and cultural components. Laughter is often interpreted by researchers as a natural behavior, akin to tickling or an organic reflex. However, distinctions emerge when laughter as vocalization observed in the animal kingdom is compared with laughter as an evaluative response to social situations in human life. Natural situations lack normative frameworks and therefore do not elicit laughter. In contrast, normative situations do so as a result of evaluating an individual’s inconsistency with the rules governing such situations. The analysis has shown that both normative situations and laughter exhibit pronounced dialectical properties in their structures. These properties manifest themselves in contradictory relations between elements of normative situations and similar dynamics in the construction of humorous stimuli. The findings suggest that laughter serves as a unique tool for maintaining social cohesion by unifying its structural components.

The sociocultural educational environment is considered a strategic resource for universities, influencing student academic motivation and engagement. However, in the Russian context, there are no compact, psychometrically validated instruments that could comprehensively characterize key parameters of the educational environment through student assessments. The aim of this article is to develop and validate a scale for student assessment of the sociocultural educational environment of a university. The study involved 3,748 students from 32 universities located in seven federal districts of the Russian Federation (females = 71.2%; mean age = 20.4 years). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed; reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients and test-retest procedures ( N = 59, 5-month interval). Convergent validity was examined using instruments measuring academic motivation, educational experience, academic burnout, and subjective assessments of the feasibility of core values in the university environment. The study has empirically confirmed the scale’s theoretically grounded four-factor structure, including assessments of the spatialsemantic, content-methodological and communication-organizational components of the sociocultural educational environment, as well as the students’ personal engagement. Its indicators demonstrate a high level of internal consistency and sufficient test-retest reliability. The scale correlates positively with the characteristics of motivation, educational experience and assessments of the feasibility of core values in the university environment, while the academic burnout and the discrepancy between the importance of values and the possibility of their implementation in the university environment form inverse relationships with it, characterizing its convergent validity. The sociocultural focus of the educational environment in the scale is confirmed by it positive correlations with the feasibility of values and satisfaction with the environment, and negative correlations with the discrepancy between personal values and university normative values, as well as academic burnout. The scale indicator is not associated with student age, confirming its discriminant validity. The developed scale combines compactness and high psychometric properties, filling the niche of comprehensive Russianlanguage tools for assessing the university environment.

The growing volume of biomedical research requires scientists and physicians to possess not only profound professional but also modern legal competences, given the dynamic development of legislation and the high level of responsibility for upholding human rights and freedoms. This article addresses the apparent contradiction between the objective need to develop legal competences in future medical professionals for the ethical and safe implementation of biomedical projects and their insufficient legal training within existing educational programs. The purpose of this study is to assess the level of medical students’ awareness of the legal and ethical principles that are keys in research involving humans and animals, as well as to analyze the development of their legal competences. In this regard, the article focuses on the standards of the Declaration of Helsinki, which serves as a global benchmark for ethical research practices and is integrated into Russian national legislation. The authors present the results of an anonymous online survey of 177 medical students majoring in General Medicine, Pediatrics and Dentistry. These results have shown that the respondents share key ethical values in scientific research but lack the legal knowledge necessary to develop their legal competences. This represents an important pedagogical challenge in this context and underscores the need to incorporate professionally oriented legal disciplines into medical educational programs. The materials and conclusions of this article may also be useful to researchers and practicing physicians in addressing pressing scientific challenges in biomedicine and healthcare.

Executive functions (EFs) in preschool age are significant predictors of cognitive development with long-term effects in adulthood; they are influenced by several factors, including personality traits and socioeconomic status. Recent studies highlight the significant parental influence, especially as parent-reported questionnaires have gained importance in assessing children’s EFs. The aim of this study was to examine the role of parental personality traits and parenting behaviors in assessing the development of EFs in preschool children. The study involved 526 mothers of preschoolers (aged 24-55, M = 36.74, SD = 4.91). The participants completed a survey based on Russian-language versions of the Childhood Executive Functioning Inventory (CHEXI), the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI-RU) and an item-reduced version of the Comprehensive General Parenting Questionnaire (CGPQ). The study revealed significant associations of parental personality traits and parenting behaviors with assessments of children’s EFs. The parents who rated their children’s EFs more positively demonstrated higher levels of extraversion, conscientiousness and openness, as well as structured and caring parenting, while negative ratings correlated with neuroticism and controlling behaviors. Structured parenting showed a positive association with conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience, but a negative correlation with neuroticism. Caring parenting similarly correlated with conscientiousness and extraversion, while controlling behaviors showed minimal associations with personality traits. These findings highlight the relationship of parental perceptions with personality traits and behaviors, suggesting the need to critically interpret parent-reported assessments of children’s EFs in clinical and educational contexts, emphasizing the value of integrating multiple assessment methods and developing improved instruments that account for parental perception biases.

The author attempts to present Serge Moscovici’s original new look into the sexgender thêmata within the context of what he called the “natural question”. As Moscovici argued, a return to nature was imperative, but hardly achievable given the lifestyles of our hubris societies. In commemoration of the centenary of his birth (1925-2014), this article aims to highlight Serge Moscovici’s contribution to elucidating what he meant by the “natural question”, i.e., the complex relations between human societies and nature, not as opposites but as historically interconnected phenomena. Serge Moscovici was one of the first authors to draw our attention to the priority of preserving nature through degrowth turn as an imperative for our own survival. According to this long-term visionary perspective, we, humans, must completely abandon our predatory lifestyles and also implement profound changes in unequal social relations, in which the “second sex” could come to assume a decisive historical role. Although the concept of ecofeminism was not invented by him, it was Moscovici who first introduced the idea of relating the condition of women under domination to the natural question, not as a meritocratic version of the war of the sexes, but rather as a radical change in the role of the family as the fundamental traditional structure of society. Serge Moscovici’s original interpretation of Sophocles’ classic Antigone is an illustration of this movement, already noticeable in our time.