In color–word and picture–word interference (PWI) tests, participants perform a speeded naming of target stimuli (colors or images) while ignoring distractors. In a number of studies, it has been shown that pseudoword distractors diminish the target naming latencies compared with high–frequency words (the distractor lexicality effect). However, some further studies have failed to replicate this effect. Moreover, in several studies the effect had an opposite direction: pseudoword distractors increased the target naming latencies. Analysis of available literature has led us to conclude that the effect's direction can depend on two factors: either on the type of interference test (color–word or picture–word interference tests) or on the method of pseudowords' creation (changing the words of natural language or generating them using a computer program). In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that the distractor lexicality effect depends on the type of interference test. In two PWI experiments, pseudowords created from the words of natural language reduced the picture naming latencies compared with high-frequency words. Since similar results were obtained in studies using the color–word interference test, we conclude that the distractor lexicality effect does not depend on the type of interference paradigm. The results we obtained contradict fndings of E. Dhooge and R. J. Hartsuiker (2012). In their PWI experiments, the distractor lexicality effect had an opposite direction. We explain the contradiction between experimental results by the fact that E. Dhooge and R. J. Hartsuiker generated pseudoword stimuli using the computer program WordGen, while in our study pseudowords were made from the real words of the Russian language. Thus, the method of pseudowords' creation may be a critical determinant of the distractor lexicality effect in the PWI paradigm.

Joint attention is attention to an external object shared between two persons. The joint attention mechanism plays an important role in early cognitive, social and emotional development. Therefore, impairments of joint attention development can trigger different psychic disorders. The simplest form of joint attentional behavior is gaze following. The literature on the development of gaze following in children indicates that there is a great deal of variance regarding the age of emergence and development of this kill. This study aims to examine the age dynamics of the gaze following skill in infants and to establish more precisely the age at which this skill emerges. This comparative study of gaze following ability of infants at the age of 5, 10 and 15 months was conducted in Yekaterinburg at the Laboratory of the Brain and Neurocognitive Development, Ural Federal University. Gaze following ability was measured by the eye tracker task “Gaze following”. Signifcant differences were found between the proportion of tasks with frst gaze to a congruent object performed by 5 and 10 month old children and between 10 and 15 month old children. Furthermore, there was a signifcant difference of fxation duration on a congruent object between 10 and 15 month old children. The results reveal that the gaze following ability emerges in children already by the age of 5 months, develops signifcantly by 10 months, and develops almost completely by 15 months.

The paper presents an outline of psychotherapy as a complex of socio-cultural phenomena, consisting of two levels or aspects: psychotherapy as a form of professional activity and psychotherapy as a science. We take into account both the internal relations between the levels and their external connections to various scientifc and practical subfelds of psychology and medicine. A crucial marker of psychotherapy as professional activity involves the use of four main principles of psychological infuence: suggestion, explanation, conditioning, and abreaction — as caregiving. It is proposed that the development of psychotherapy may be divided into three main stages: the pre-conceptual, from the middle of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century; the stage of formation of the main psychotherapeutic traditions, from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the 1940s; and the stage of the expansion of psychotherapeutic approaches to non-medical areas of social practice and care, such as counseling, coaching etc. Special attention was also paid to the development of views on the contingent of psychotherapeutic care recipients and its infuence on the development of psychotherapeutic theory. Conceptual development of psychotherapy is viewed as a systematic expansion from specifc clinical interests to a broad feld of psychological, philosophical etc. conceptualization under the infuence of changing social requests in the 20th century.

Momentary tongue protrusion (MTP) is a micro-mimic discursive sign which in some cases is functionally similar to the hesitation pause. However, MTP is of a more complex nature than hesitation pauses. While hesitation often hinders comprehension, the addressee is indifferent to MTP: it is not normally noticed. MTP is considered to be a product of accumulation of the sender's psychological discomfort. It is an act of relief from excitement. MTP is a source of information about the sender's feelings at the moment of speech. MTP may be manifested both in situations where no punctuation in writing is required (in cases of tip-of-the-tongue states or slips) as well as where it is obligatory. Variants of MTP collected under the present study are divided into three groups, depending on potential vehicles of expression. The fact that MTP can link counterposed stances at the level of different participants' conversational turn-taking, as well as integrate loud speech and silent response into a unifed text, allows us to regard it as a means of micro-mimic structuring of vertical discursive rapports. MTP is equivalent to the unsaid, or to the unsayable due to external or internal reasons. It marks the individual's condition of intensive internal dialogue

Previous studies of categorical memory illusion showed the
infuence of both the encoding and the retrieval phase on the formation of
the illusion. To describe and compare the level of category illusion (false recognition of a typical class representative) under various retrieval conditions we developed and modifed six lists of categorized pictures. In a series of three experiments with different conditions at the retrieval phase, subjects studied lists of categorized pictures. In experiment 1, false recognition was manifested for different exemplars of critical lures that had various perceptual details. However, the percent of false recognitions was different for each exemplar. The aim of experiment 2 was to describe false recognition of a typical class representative in a condition of several critical lures at the retrieval phase. In experiment 3, we compared conditions with one and several exemplars of critical lure shown at the retrieval phase. We expected the subjects in a condition with several exemplars of critical lures to rely on perceptual details; since they would not recall them, the subjects would reject all the proposed alternatives. We found no statistically signifcant differences in the number of correct answers between a condition with one and with several exemplars of a critical lure. However, the condition with several exemplars of the critical lure was found to decrease confdence in the correct response, which may indicate a more complex task.

This research was focused on postdictive properties of apparent motion — an illusion of movement resulting from successive presentation of two dots. Obviously, the mechanisms of integration of two dots' representations can take place only after the second dot is presented. There are two alternatives of what exactly happens. Firstly, a person becomes aware of the frst dot, then the second dot, and then reconstructs his or her memories of what he or she just saw. Secondly, the person becomes aware of the frst dot, and unconscious integration occurs before he/she becomes aware of the second dot, so that the person becomes aware of the sum “sense of motion + second dot”. Our research revealed evidence in favor of the latter— unconscious integration. During the experiment, participants observed stimuli corresponding to different levels of illusory strength or lack of illusion. Signifcant differences in amplitudes of ERP components P100 and N200 can be related to qualitative differences in awareness of the second dot, depending on the strength of illusion. This means that these differences are determined by unconscious integration that happened prior to awareness. Signifcant differences of alpha-band power up to 300 ms after the second dot's onset demonstrate that unconscious integration can be performed at the expense of suppression of the alpha-band. Thus, the contents of perception which a person apprehends can be described as unconscious ntegration of stimuli, captured in a small time interval prior to the moment of awareness. Going forward, we can seek to determine more precisely the characteristics of tendencies revealed in the present study.

The article describes research into the impact of explicit knowledge on the transfer effect of artifcial grammar rules on solving sensorimotor tasks. We analyzed the effect of transfer of implicit knowledge in a procedure which was irrelevant to the learning phase. 80 volunteers took part in the experiment. Participants learned the rules of artifcial grammar in the training phase. The control phase was not standard for the method of “artifcial grammar learning”. The task of the control phase was to react to the appearance of two different stimuli. In the experimental groups, a grammatical sequence always appeared before the presentation of a green stimulus, and an ungrammatical sequence before the presentation of a yellow stimulus. In the control groups, the color of the stimulus was not dependent on the grammaticality of a sequence. In experimental group № 1 and control group № 1, participants were informed about the existence of a rule of artifcial grammar before the training phase; in experimental group № 2 and control group № 2 — afterwards. The results showed the effect of transfer: in experimental groups the time of sensorimotor reaction to stimuli associated with grammaticality of sequence was signifcantly less than in control groups. Explicit information about the existence of a rule of artifcial grammar after the training phase reduces the effectiveness of transfer of implicitly learned knowledge of artifcial grammar on sensorimotor activity.

Numerous studies of insight problem solving are focused on working memory system. We obtained contradictory data about how working memory is involved in the insight process. We argue that measuring the dynamics of working memory over the course of problem solving can provide a more refned view regarding the process as a whole and explain the existing controversies. Our study employed a dual task paradigm to track the dynamics of working memory load during problem solving. We varied the complexity of the probe-task and the problem type (insight and algorithmized). The results indicated that the dynamics of working memory load in insight problems differ from those in algorithmized problems. The complexity of the probe-task affects the total reaction times in both types of problem solving. We found that the working memory load in algorithmized problems increases from stage to stage due to the allocation of cognitive resources to interim calculations. The nature of the dynamics of working memory load in insight problems remains debatable. We can claim that insight problem solving places demands on working memory during the entire problem solving process and that the central executive system plays an important role just prior to solution.

I try to compare two well-known theories of categorization: the theory of graded structure (prototype approach) and the theory of theory (knowledge approach). While most researchers consider them to be in opposition to each other, some academics argue that both are based on feature analysis. In analyzing on relatively recent papers (starting from the year 2000) by the theories' founders, Eleanor Rosch and Gregory Murphy, I found additional points that lead me to question the tradition of setting the theory of theory against prototype theory. For example, Murphy builds his critique of Rosch's conception by assuming that her theory pretends to cover all aspects of categorization area, or, that in Roschean view there is a single “real” prototype for a category. However, Murphy admits that some of his assumptions are based on his interpretation of Rosch's research and even contradict her personal statements. For her part, Rosch argues that people's knowledge is just a part of the context that infuences people's categorization, reminding us that this was known long before Murphy's idea. I agree with Rosch about the knowledge approach: it seems to be not a new concept but rather an addition to the existing understanding of categorization mechanisms, particularly in the area of context effect. In conclusion, the discussion between Murphy and Rosch poses the question of how comparable are their theories: Rosch focuses on the graded structure of concepts, while also trying to create a basis for some rigorous (mathematical) solution, and Murphy emphasizes that “folk” theories play a key role in the categorization process.

The article presents some results of the psychosemiotic research related in our monograph [Novikova-Grund 2014], which focused on proving the following hypotheses: 1. An individual's unique picture of the world does exist (it is neither an image nor a metaphor); 2. An individual's unique picture of the world is refected on his texts in such a way that it can be presented as a map based on the formal characteristics of the text. An important element of the unique picture of the world of an individual is the use of the verb forms of Future Tense or their avoidance. The use of Future Tense by a person in his (her) spontaneous (not edited) texts is a result of his (her) free and unconscious choice. Comparative analysis of texts of a control group which consisted of people who had made numerous attempts at committing suicide and texts of an experimental group which consisted of people who had never made any such attempts showed a quantitative difference in the use of forms of Future Tense: more than 60% in the group of those attempting suicide and less that 1% in the experimental group (100% referred to all the tense forms used in the text). The next experimental stage was to calculate the relative percentage of Future Tense verb forms in a large body of texts produced by 19th–20th century authors who are known to have never attempted to commit suicide. A rather simple mathematical method of calculation, created for solving this particular problem, allowed us to confrm with confdence that the coincidence of these numerical results could not be an accident. Interpreting the results withing a psychological, rather that a linguistic framework allowed us to convincingly link both the use and the avoidance of Future Tense forms with the existential fear of death and with different strategies for coping with it.

The paper presents the chronicle of the conference “Mediatization of Culture: Construction New Texts and Practices” (Moscow, November 30 — December 1, 2018). The purpose of the conference was to discuss the phenomenon of mediatization of culture, as seen by different scholars from the point of their optics (social studies, anthropology, folklore studies, media studies) or from the perspective of purely applied projects. Today, the media don't merely transmit information, don't merely mediate between humans or between humans and technologies, and don't merely, on a daily basis, demonstrate new ways of transmitting information. Mediality permeates the surrounding world through and through and constructs it together with other social institutes; from a mediator or transmission channel it has turned into an actor within the cultural or social reality, with all the resulting consequences. The conference participants discussed these consequences.