RUDN Journal of Psychology and Pedagogics

This article introduces the Plurilingual Intercultural Creative Keys (PICK) program, which aims to enhance individual adaptability by developing creative, intercultural, and linguistic competencies. Drawing on empirical studies from the past 25 years, PICK emphasizes the interconnectedness of these competencies and their role in fostering personal and cognitive adaptability. The program takes a holistic approach, complementing existing curricula by addressing the educational environment’s curricular, psychological, and sociocultural dimensions. Importantly, PICK seeks to reform educators’ pedagogical methods without altering the existing curriculum, focusing instead on transforming teaching practices within current educational structures. Targeted at teachers, tutors, and homeschooling parents, PICK equips educators with both theoretical insights and practical tools to innovate their teaching approaches. The program consists of training modules centered on each competency, supported by lectures and workshops that promote intrinsic motivation, critical thinking, and a positive psychological climate through project-based learning. Additionally, PICK provides continuous psychological and methodological support to ensure the effective application of its methods. This article also presents a theoretical framework that integrates the concepts of plurilingualism, creativity, intercultural competence, and systemic adaptation. Rather than introducing new empirical data, it synthesizes existing theories and research from educational psychology, cognitive development, and cross-cultural studies. This synthesis forms the basis of the PICK program, offering a conceptual model that positions plurilingual creativity - the ability to think creatively and communicate across languages and cultures - as a catalyst for systemic adaptation. By uniting theories of cognitive adaptability, psychological resilience, and educational methodologies, the article contributes to advancing theoretical understanding while laying the groundwork for future research and practical applications. By bridging traditional academic instruction with the evolving demands of a globalized world, PICK offers a robust framework for integrating soft skills into education. The program’s potential to foster adaptive, innovative, and globally competent learners underscores its contribution to advancing contemporary educational paradigms.

Motivation to learn a foreign language (including Russian as such) is one of the important psychological factors of its successful acquisition. The theoretical approaches to the analysis of motivation to learn a foreign language considered in this article are usually implemented within the explanatory paradigm using quantitative methods that cannot describe the manifestations of motivation in their fullness and qualitative originality. For this reason, based on the Self-Determination Theory, the authors attempted to qualitatively analyze the motivation to learn Russian in a sample of learners from Thailand and Myanmar. The sample consisted of 18 people in Thailand (6 men and 12 women) and 14 people in Myanmar (2 men and 12 women) selected from among the learners of Russian language courses based on Centers for Open Education in Russian and Russian Language Teaching at Prince of Songkla University (Thailand) and Mandalay University of Foreign Languages (Myanmar). The authors conducted a thematic semi-structured interview focused on the topic of motivation to learn Russian, the results of which were subjected to qualitative content analysis. The categories for the analysis were formed in accordance with the types of motivational regulation described by the selfdetermination theory; the subcategories were formulated taking into account theoretical concepts and the content of the interviews. The results showed that in the conditions of shortterm free courses, the learners from Thailand and Myanmar demonstrated exclusively autonomous motivation to learn Russian, which ensured the greatest productivity of educational activities. The most typical manifestations of autonomous motivation among the students of such courses included interest in languages in general and in the Russian language in particular, in Russia and its culture, as well as an understanding of the importance of the Russian language for their work and professional growth.

The problem of individuals and groups supporting discriminatory attitudes, which is one of the obstacles to the sustainable development of society, is in the field of research attention of psychology, sociology, law and other sciences. The issue of studying the psychological, socio-psychological, and cultural-historical grounds of the formation and support of discriminatory attitudes is one of the most important tasks of modern social psychology. The purpose of the study is to analyze the psychological, socio-psychological and cultural-historical grounds and support for discriminatory attitudes and means of their elimination in a situation of interaction from the standpoint of a systemic-diachronic approach. The author conducted a review and a detailed analysis of research on the cognitive, emotive and conative components of discriminatory attitudes, socio-psychological (including intergroup relations and socialization) and cultural-historical (including competitive relations and cultural transmission) grounds, principles of a systemic-diachronic approach to research, as well as applied research on eliminating discriminatory attitudes. The differentiation of discriminatory attitudes by targets of discrimination and their generalization by type, the presence of common grounds and behavioral manifestations were also noted. In addition, a systemic-diachronic approach was proposed, supported by comprehensive and meta-systemic approaches to the study of attitudes, according to which discriminatory attitudes should be considered as dynamic and structurally homogeneous, characterized by synchrony and diachrony under the influence of situational and evolutionary factors of interaction between an individual or a group with heterogeneous social subjects or objects, and taking into account various explanatory principles of their emergence, functioning and support. As a result of the theoretical analysis, the author developed a model for supporting discriminatory attitudes, reflecting their systemic structure and dynamic aspects of action. The principle of diachrony can be used to destroy consolidated discriminatory attitudes.

The relevance of this study is due to the need to adapt psychology to the challenges of the digital era and integrate new tools for predicting the future of science. The use of large language models, such as ChatGPT, opens up prospects for analyzing scientific representations and trends in the psychology of the future. The purpose of the article is to determine the possibility of dialogue with ChatGPT for analyzing promising areas of psychology and to highlight ‘representations’ of the future of psychological science encoded in the GPT-3.5 text database. The study was conducted in three stages: (1) determining the optimal interaction parameters for ChatGPT; (2) developing an interview framework based on S. Kvale’s methodology; and (3) conducting a series of interviews followed by text analysis using A. Giorgi’s meaning condensation method. In the process, the prompt parameters were optimized to improve the quality and completeness of the responses, and the model limitations were identified, including the problem of ‘hallucinations’. The results of the study showed that the quality of ChatGPT responses would depend on the structure of the prompts, the described roles, and the context of the task. The optimal prompt length was determined to be up to 13,000 characters, while the key challenges included superficial answers to simple queries and the generation of unreliable data, which required critical verification. The research interview with ChatGPT made it possible to reconstruct representations about the future of psychology, highlighting 73 relevant research areas, including artificial intelligence, positive psychology, virtual reality, and online psychotherapy. It was found that the future design of psychological research would be based on the use of Big Data, machine learning, virtual reality technologies, and multimethod approaches. It was shown that the future of psychological science would largely depend on the integration of psychology with neuroscience, genetics, epigenetics, and artificial intelligence. The study demonstrated the potential of using ChatGPT to analyze scientific representations and identify promising directions for the development of psychology. The results obtained make it possible to assess the capabilities of large language models as tools for specific psychological research, emphasizing their relevance in the context of contemporary interdisciplinary approaches.

Diagnostics of mental development is a prerequisite for the timely identification of potential developmental risks and their correction in children of all ages. The development and implementation of digital versions of professional diagnostic methods will make it possible to ensure their availability, significantly reduce the procedural burden and improve the quality of the collected data. This study is aimed at assessing the diagnostic capabilities and psychometric characteristics of the digital version of the NEPSY II battery subtest: Memory for Designs. The study was conducted according to an intra-individual scheme on a sample of 62 preschool children. The sample was divided into two groups depending on the sequence of the traditional and digital versions of the methodology. The results confirmed the high consistency and internal reliability of both versions. Medium and strong positive correlations between the indicators of the method were found, regardless of the method of presentation. No significant differences were recorded in the results of visual working memory diagnostics depending on the form of the presented method. The results obtained open up new prospects for further research in the field of child development; in particular, they allow large-scale screening studies using the digital version of the methodology. However, it is important to remember that each digital tool must undergo a testing procedure before being used in large-scale screening studies, which includes a more detailed assessment of its psychometric properties and ergonomics.

To date, a large body or research has been accumulated on the topic of economic inequality. Assessments of the perceived level of economic inequality make a significant contribution to social behavior, such as willingness to support initiatives aimed at reducing inequality. However, there is no consensus among researchers on the methods used to assess perceived economic inequality, and the previously identified classes of methods show that each of them has both advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of this paper is to test the effectiveness of various methods for measuring the features of perception of economic inequality in the Russian sociocultural context, using data from 761 respondents ( M age = 36.58, SD age = 10.85). The internal validity is measured by the relationship among the assessments of different methods. The external validity is measured based on the relationship between the obtained assessments and the willingness to justify the existing system, as well as with the support of various procedures and initiatives aimed at reducing inequality (support for a universal basic income and support for the introduction of progressive taxation). Of all the methods tested (3 direct inequality assessment tasks, 2 alternative choice tasks, task of accordance and a self-categorization task), representations of inequality in consumption and self-categorization in social hierarchy have been found to be the most effective ways to assess perceived inequality. Using more effective methods for measuring perceived economic inequality, it is possible to increase the measurement accuracy, make the findings of the work more valid and facilitate comparison of results from different studies.

The article is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Aleksandr F. Lazursky (1874-1917), Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, an outstanding psychologist, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, the founder of the psychology of relations and author of the world’s first personality theory as well as the first domestic curriculum in clinical (medical) psychology. The author describes the main stages of the scientist’s development: training at the Military Medical Academy and an internship in psychology at leading European scientific centers; characterizes the scientific concept of ‘relation’, on the basis of which the scientist developed the world’s first psychological personality theory; and also shows that the psychology of relations of A.F. Lazursky is the basis of psychotherapeutic methods of the Petersburg (Leningrad) school of psychotherapy (represented by V.M. Bekhterev, V.S. Siegel, V.N. Myasishchev, B.D. Karvasarsky, A. A. Aleksandrov, V. Yu. Slabinsky and others).