No 3 (2016)

Free recall consists of two separate stages: the emptying of working memory and reactivation [5]. The Tarnow Unchunkable Test (TUT, [7]) uses double integer items to separate out only the first stage by making it difficult to reactivate items due to the lack of intra-item relationships.193 Russian college students were tested via the internet version of the TUT. The average number of items remembered in the 3 item test was 2.54 items. In the 4 item test, the average number of items decreased to 2.38. This, and a number of other qualitative distribution differences between the 3 and 4 item tests, indicate that the average capacity limit of working memory has been reached at 3 items. This provides the first direct measurement of the unchunkable capacity limit of number items.Difficulties in managing working memory occurred as most subjects remembered less as the number of items increased beyond capacity and failed to remember a single item in at least one out of three 4 item trials. The Pearson correlation between the total recall of 3 and 4 items was a small 38%.

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of how tolerance towards uncertainty correlates with the individual’s adaptive readiness. Adaptive readiness is defined as an integral concept that includes not only the person’s notions about his/her own ability to adapt (in general or to a particular (specific) situation), but also the affirmations about his/her ability to cope with difficulties arising in the process of the interaction with other people; changes in the economic, environmental, political, and other spheres of life; his/her health or his/her socio-psychological or other status, etc.. Studies prove that adaptive readiness (affirmation), adaptiveness (personality property), and readiness for change (attitude) are predictors of tolerance towards uncertainty. It is shown that, when a variable is singularly and conjointly introduced into the regression equation, adaptive readiness influences the parameters of tolerance in the most profound way relative to both socio-psychological adaptiveness and the parameters of readiness for change.

The article discusses the themes of ethnic stereotypes and lifestyle of indigenous peoples of the North and the non-indigenous peoples. The indigenous peoples identify with their ethnic group, positive evaluation of their perceptions of themselves prevail. The indigenous peoples believe that the representatives of other ethnic groups assess them less positively, and in fact, the representatives of non-indigenous peoples evaluate them even worse than they suppose. The students from the number of indigenous peoples consider as the most important parameters for the evaluation of their lifestyle (factors of evaluations): “unattractiveness - attractiveness”, “peacefulness - hostility”, “melancholy - sanguine”. The students from the number of non-indigenous people consider the most important parameters for the evaluation of their lifestyle: “well-being - ill-being”, “hostility - peacefulness”, “sanguine - melancholy”. The testees of both samples evaluate their lifestyle more positively at the conscious, reflexive level (universals), than at the unconscious, uncontrolled level (implicit factor structure of evaluations). The testees of both samples evaluated their lifestyle completely differently at the unconscious, non-regulated level (factorial structure of evaluations), indigenous people have more introverted, non-indigenous people have more extroverted evaluations.

The article considers the theoretical background for studying the conection between shyness as a personality trait and students’ intercultural adjustment. One of the principal goals of the contemporary educational systems is to stimulate knowledge and cultural interchange and form a multicultural educational environment. The adjustment of foreign students to a new culture as well as to the educational process is realized through communication, therefore the personality traits related to social interaction are expected to give their contribution to this process. Shyness as a personality trait has been conceptualized mostly based on the western empirical research. Many neurological, physiological, psychological, social and cultural correlates have been brought to light. Among the contemporary lines of investigation on shyness it is important to emphasize the role of this feature in different social interactions and circumstances. Nevertheless, the association of shyness and the intercultural adjustment hasn’t been considered in studies up to now. In the present article the authors tried to mark out the main points of contiguity of these two phenomena and ground the potential of this line of investigation.

The article is devoted to the key issue of foreign language teaching - the concept of method - deductive or inductive. The opposition is surveyed and analysed on the basis of foreign research in this field including a spectrum of basic categories and subcategories of the deductive-inductive continuum of explicit and implicit knowledge with all the contradictions, complexity and multi-factor nature of the experimental results. Besides, methodological, philosophic and pedagogical foundations of induction and deduction are considered in the light of achievements of cognive psychology (L.S. Vygotsky, J. Piaget, J. Bruner), constructivism (E. von Glasersfeld), synergetics (I. Prigozhin, L. Bertalanffy, H. Haken), critical pedagogy (H. Giroux, P. McLaren), “episodical learning” (S.I. Gessen), existential philosophy of education (N.A. Berdyaev), problem-based learning (J. Dewey). The range of questions dealt with are as follows: effectiveness of foreign language teaching as a criterion of learning success; ends and means in the process of education; ethical dependence of foreign language learning, in particular pedagogical coercion; inductive strategies in language creative work, linguistic self-organization, development of critical thinking (the principle of discovery, problem-based tasks). Methodological analysis of the problem state and ways of its solution showed divergence of opinion that indicates the necessity of multiple evaluation and complementarity of both inductive and deductive approaches under different conditions and for different purposes. At the same time philosophic and pedagogical view revealed the significance of ethical and motivation factors such as inherent value of learning process, the issue of ends and means in the broad educational context.