Search

This article substantiates the impact of the crisis situation on the actualization and development of personal resources and coping with a difficult life situation. Using the example of students living in a local military conflict zone, it is shown that value-semantic resources (psychological resources of stability) in a crisis situation can transform and manifest themselves at the level of reducing the level of meaningfulness of life, value basis and existential fulfillment of life, reducing the degree of emotional response to current events. A crisis situation for a person, on the one hand, can become a source of disintegration in the perception of events of the past, present and future; loss of meaningfulness of life and devaluation of past experience; on the other hand, it can result in subjective well–being if a person works with a psychoemotional state (that includes working with fear and anxiety; perception of a difficult life situation as a challenge and finding new ones personal meanings); works with goals (building an image of the future in the short term), and if a person is rethinking and updating new personal meanings. According to the results of our research, goal-setting and building an image of the future are interrelated with the ability of the subject to be more open to emotional experiences, to show willingness to work with negative emotions (the “Self-Transcendence” scale); to actualize his personal potential (the “Personality” scale). The following empirical methods were used: Test of life-meaning orientations. SJO (J. Crumbo, L. Maholik in adaptation by D. A. Leontyev); Test of research into the real structure of a person’s value orientations (S.S. Bubnova); Methodology for diagnosing the subjective well-being of an individual (Shamionov R.M., Beskova T.V.); «The scale of existence» (Existenzskala) by A. Langle and K. Orgler (adapted by I. N. Mainina and A. Yu. Vasanov).

The article attempts to describe the features of a person’s volitional regulation regarding the aspect of the implementation and realization of his intention in action in a challenging situation of the modern world: complexity, uncertainty, stress. The approaches to the study of will in psychology and philosophy have been analyzed. The role of trust in the implementation of a person’s choice and the realization of intention in action has been shown . The following empirical methods were used: the psychometric technique “Self-confidence” by T.P. Skripkina, the Scale of interpersonal trust by J.Rotter in the adaptation of S.G. Dostovalov, the methodology of “Life orientations, SOHO” D. A. Leontiev, express diagnostics of propensity to unmotivated anxiety (V.V. Boyko), “Control in action” by Yu. Kull in S.A. Shapkin’s adaptation. According to the results of our study, we can conclude that there are differences in the realization of the intention to act, depending on the different ratio of the level of trust in oneself and in the world. Self-trust can be a component and an important resource of self-regulation.

This article is devoted to the study of psychological predictors of students’ informational behavior and their peculiarities of over-coming stressful situations. The article reveals the relevance of studying this problem, the degree of study of the topic of informational behavior in various scientific fields. The necessity of studying the motivational basis of informational behavior is substantiated; the analysis of diagnostic approaches to the study of informational behavior is given. The article presents the author’s approach to studying the motivational basis of informational behavior and reveals two groups of informational behavior strategies - normative and risky. The empirical part of the article presents an analysis of the conducted research for the study of psychological predictors of students’ informational behavior in the Internet. It was revealed that the normative strategy of informational behavior “Internet as a motivating force” has the largest number of correlations with coping strategies and indicators of resilience. The results obtained can prove the adaptability of students who actively use the socially oriented strategy “Internet as a motivating force” and the level of their resilience.

Strategies of meaning formation are included in the highest level of regulation of an individual life. The article presents the results of empirical determination of the polar meaning strategies marker. In the initial modeling of the meaning formation processes, two polar strategies are proposed: adaptive and developmental. The system of personal meanings occupies a central place in the structure of the personality and is correlated with its properties manifested in interactions. For an empirical description of polar strategies, we developed nine scales of personality properties according to the type of private semantic differential. In these bipolar semantic scales, we used words that denote personality traits that act as indicators of meaning. An empirical study was carried out with the use of various techniques for studying semantic regulation of a person to determine a marker that allows one to identify these meaning strategies. The battery of tests included: the author’s private semantic differential, including nine scales of personality properties, “Test of life-sense orientations” (by D. A. Leontiev), test “Who Am I?” (by M. Kuhn), “Multiple intelligence test” (by G. Gardner), “Test of frustration tolerance” (by S. Rosenzweig), “Questionnaire of personality reflection” (by I. A. Stetsenko). An empirical sample (n = 145) found that a stable positive statistically significant correlation (p≤.05) exists only between the indicators of nine developed scales of personal properties and the indicator “Meaningfulness of life” in the “Test of life-sense orientations” by D.A. Leontiev. This indicator “Meaning-fulness of life” can be used as an indicator marker of polar strategies of meaning formation: adaptive and developmental. Its use contributes to a more effective study of the processes of meaning formation and reduces the laboriousness of diagnostic procedures.

The article substantiates the importance and relevance of studies on ethnic identity and value orientations, since they predetermine the assimilation of the spiritual culture of society, the formation of value orientations significantly contributes to the development of the individual. For that goal, a study was conducted with 160 bachelor and master students (ethnic Armenians and Russians living in Russia and Armenia) with a use of Twenty Statements Test and Schwartz’s Value Survey. The results of the study allowed us to describe common characteristics of the value-semantic aspect of the ethnic identity in Armenian and Russian title ethnos and diaspora. Thus, we aimed to describe of the process of identifying and assigning the values in Armenians as a dual process: the acceptance of values, the norms of the group with which a person is identified; the comparison of himself and his group with others, which has a positive impact on the cohesion of his group.

The article reveals the notion of distance education, meaning formation, meaningful technologies. The modern concept of psychological and pedagogical support of talent is associated with the concept of the child’s abilities disclosure in education. Discussion about the developing potential of distance education, where, on the one hand, the student’s development potential is flattened, compressed and translated into “one-dimensional space” in the process of education; on the other hand, there is a whole range of opportunities to initiate independent activity of students, to include mechanisms of cognitive and personal development of a modern student. The psychological bases of active learning technologies in distance education of gifted students are described. The author’s classification of interactive learning technologies using remote technologies is considered, where each technology finds several concrete embodiments. The results of an experimental study of gifted students’ independent activity initiation in distance education are presented.

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are caused by the prion, which consists essentially of PrPSc, an aggregated, conformationally modified form of the cellular prion protein (PrPC). Although TSEs can be experimentally transmitted by intracerebral inoculation, most instances of infection in the field occur through extracerebral routes. The epidemics of kuru and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease were caused by dietary exposure to prions, and parenteral administration of prion-contaminated hormones has caused hundreds of iatrogenic TSEs. In all these instances, the development of postexposure prophylaxis relies on understanding of how prions propagate from the site of entry to the brain. While much evidence points to lymphoreticular invasion followed by retrograde transfer through peripheral nerves, prions are present in the blood and may conceivably cross the blood-brain barrier directly. Here we have addressed the role of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in prion disease propagation using Pdgfbret/ret mice which possess a highly permeable BBB. We found that Pdgfbret/ret mice have a similar prion disease incubation time as their littermate controls regardless of the route of prion transmission. These surprising results indicate that BBB permeability is irrelevant to the initiation of prion disease, even when prions are administered parenterally.

Epidemiological, clinical, and experimental animal studies suggest a strong correlation between insulin resistance and Alzheimer's disease. In fact, type-2 diabetes is considered an important risk factor of developing Alzheimer's disease. In addition, impaired insulin signaling in the Alzheimer's disease brain may promote Aβ production, impair Aβ clearance and induce tau hyperphosphorylation, thereby leading to deterioration of the disease. The pathological prion protein, PrPSc, deposits in the form of extracellular aggregates and leads to dementia, raising the question as to whether prion pathogenesis may also be affected by insulin resistance. We therefore established high-fat diet-induced insulin resistance in tga20 mice, which overexpress the prion protein. We then inoculated the insulin-resistant mice with prions. We found that insulin resistance in tga20 mice did not affect prion disease progression, PrPSc deposition, astrogliosis or microglial activation, and had no effect on survival. Our study demonstrates that in a mouse model, insulin resistance does not significantly contribute to prion pathogenesis.