The concept of “Word Soul” (kotodama) was elaborated in Japan during the Tokugawa period, but this concept originated in ancient Japan. The author analyses offcial chronicles “Nihon Koki” and “Shoku Nihon Koki” to fnd evidence of Japanization of court life and argues that the celebration of the 40th birthday of Emperor Nimmyo in 849 was part of the process. During this celebration monks of Kofukuji temple presented a long poem compiled in the Japanese language. They thought that “Word Soul” lived only in Japanese and not in other languages.

Formation of variant terms for inhabitants (katoikonyms) of one place is characteristic for the Russian language. Sometimes a variant, which is accepted in local or regional usage, differs from its synonym, used in non-local media. As a result, the local community refects upon “regular” and “irregular” names — in newspaper articles, on the Internet and in oral communication. “Irregular” naming is associated with “aliens”, particularly, with Moscow journalists. Such names are often perceived as abusive. Such a reaction is linked, frst of all, with their perception as disharmonious and rough-sounding. Secondly, a variant is often rejected because of its phonetic similarity or rhyme with some word; for example, inhabitants of Tambov reject the term tambovtsy, because it rhymes with ovtsy (Russian for ‘sheep' [pl.]). Thirdly, a variant is rejected because of its homonymy; for example, the term for an inhabitant of Kirov kirovеts, because of the Soviet model of tractor “Kirovets”. As a result, such “irregular” names gain an expressiveness that initially is unusual for the kataikonyms, and can be used as pejoratives or invectives in local speech.

This brief note aims to clarify the tasks of the cluster “Soviet education and politics of identity”. We focus on mass production of new social identities in the USSR in the mentioned period. The main argument is that new identities in the USSR always were constructed for the purpose of solving particular tasks that could contradict each other. These contradictions caused hidden tensions in Soviet social and educational policies.

The subject of the article is the concept of “vozhatyi” (“a guide”). From 1922 “ vozhatyi” is a position in the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union that, in terms of the scouting system, is close to a Patrol leader and, at the same time, a Scout-master. The key resources of the article are Soviet magazines for Pioneers (frst of all, “Vozhatyi” and “Vozhak”). The Pioneer organization arose out of the practice of scouting, but the new Pioneer practice created some absolutely new categories and social roles. “Vozhatyi” is a clear product of this process. “Vozhatyi” is a notion that includes associations with self-government and spontaneous leadership, but, on the other hand, it also implies an idea of a connection with external authorities. This fact was very important in the context of constructing the Pioneer organization that tried to declare itself a representative of children's self-government, but at the same time tried to be strongly obedient to Komsomol and the Communist Party. Thus, the word “vozhatyi” could change its key connotations in different political and social contexts. For example, there is a defnite shift in meaning from “vozhatyi” as a children's leader, taking part in Pioneers' self-governing (in the 1920s), to “vozhatyi” as someone older who links children to the Communist authorities (in the 1930s).

This article examines some pedagogical ideologemes that defned the education and training of Spanish children evacuated to the Soviet Union during the Spanish civil war (1937—1939), through the use of conceptual history. My main intention is to analyze some concepts from discourse of Spanish ideologists, Spanish children themselves and their Soviet educators. The initial section details the semantics of the Spanish concept of ‘useful person' (hombre de provecho / hombre útil) which is frequently used by the Spanish alumni. It cannot be properly understood without some knowledge of the Soviet ideological context, so the second half of the article focuses on the Soviet idea of ‘being useful to the Motherland'. The study reveals the hybrid nature of ‘moral' and ideological education of Spanish children in the Soviet Union.

The article is a review of development of children's knowledge of causes and consequences of other people's emotions, of how children explain emotional reactions of other people, and how such explanations modify in different childhood stages. As a result, we describe 4 different childhood stages characterized by types of explanations of emotional reactions. Children explain emotions in a specifc manner and make typical mistakes in such explanations. In the frst stage (about 2 years old), emotional reactions are viewed as objective in the sense that situations affect everyone's emotions similarly (e.g., birthdays make you happy, a burial makes you sad). At the end of the second year, this explanation changes to another one, in which emotions depend on the actor's explicit desires. From 3 to 5 years old, most children rely on beliefs instead of desires to explain emotional reactions in the same situations. At last, from 6 years old, children are capable of taking into account differences between people's points of view in the same situations, which explains differences in their emotional reactions.

The paper presents an overview of current research on the specifc prosocial development within the toddlerhood period. We have analyzed three studied types of possible helping behavior in the early period of life: instrumental helping, sharing and empathy. The ability to help others in reaching and bringing objects, i.e., instrumental helping, appears at the beginning of the second year of life and develops rapidly through its second half [Warneken, Tomasello 2006; 2007]. Sharing or altruistic behavior emerges later on in the range of 18-24 months [Brownell at al. 2013], however, often in limited forms, for example, after another's clear articulation of wants [Brownell at al. 2009; 2013]. At last, empathetic behavior as a prosocial act appears in the ontogenesis [Dunfeld, Kuhlmeier 2013]. At the same time, the child is able to produce empathetic help only in situation of an evident reason for the other's negative-emotional state [Svetlova et al. 2010; Dunfeld et al. 2011]. As a whole, current research data in this feld show us that the ability for instrumental helping prevails within prosocial development in early childhood, while sharing and empathetic acts are rather limited in this age and often depend on a number of special factors.

In this article the authors review classic experiments testing the impact of semantic loading of words to be ignored on Stroop interference. Common interpretations of this phenomenon are described. Empirical evidence showing that these interpretations are incorrect is discussed. In the authors' opinion interference appears as a result of work by the consciousness when it is verifying the correctness of ignoring automatically performed operations. Several consequences from the interpretation are provided. In particular, complicating the task to be ignored should lead to increase in interference. Hence, in the Stroop test, the more semantically loaded is text to be ignored, the longer it takes to name the color of this text.

The article presents an overview of studies on subsequent search misses (satisfaction of search) effect in visual search. The subsequent search misses phenomenon occurs in a visual search task when a subject fails to continue to search for a subsequent target after fnding an initial one (usually a second target is less silent that the frst one). Previous studies had revealed a number of factors that infuence subsequent search misses: time of stimuli presentation, probability of two stimuli presentation, working memory load and others. The article contains an analysis of experimental research on subsequent search misses and the theoretical models that attempt to explain this phenomenon.

Numerous studies in clinical psychology still have not become the basis for rigorous and testable models that explain the etiology of delusions. It is assumed that the results of studies of normal functioning of thinking within cognitive psychology could be heuristically valuable for further investigation of such thought disorders. This article focuses on a review of existing cognitive models of delusions, which are based on current understanding of the functioning of normal thinking. The cognitive approach to the study of delusions allows us to draw conclusions about the fundamental heterogeneity of pathogenic mechanisms of delusion in organic and functional psychoses, and also that the content of a delusion represents the pattern of cognitive impairment.

Our cognitive system is able to complete missing information: perceive partially occluded objects, draw conclusions and so on. The results of a completion process always go beyond present information. And to behave appropriately we need to distinguish between completed and really perceived information. But the mechanism of this process still remains unknown. One of the attempts to cast a light upon this problem was Source Monitoring Theory, proposed by Johnson and his colleagues [Johnson et al. 1993]. The authors investigate this problem using memory tasks and they suppose that information regarding the source of memory could be obtained by a decision making process based on difference in memory features. The results of experiments show that if our memory of some events contains more information of how it looked, and about the meaning of the event (perceptual and semantic memory features) then participants tend to think that such event has in fact happened. And if some memory contains more information as to which cognitive processes generated the image stored in memory, then participants tend to think that this event was generated by our cognitive system.

The article maintains that the mechanism of consciousness endures no contradictions and tries its best to construct a consistent picture from conscious representations. If one cannot manage with contradiction he/she experiences strong feelings or even temporarily loses his/her conscious control. Classical and present-day experimental results are considered, including research by the St. Petersburg cognitive psychology group, which provide examples of the following main ways of eliminating contradictions: 1. Being aware of only one of possible interpretations and at the same time rejecting all the other ones, which are inconsistent with the former one. 2. Being alternately conscious of inconsistent meanings — no one can be simultaneously conscious of inconsistent meanings. 3. Unconscious distortion of information, so that the contradiction is reduced or totally disappears. 4. Constructing a unifed context that transforms the contradiction into the consistent whole. 5. Depreciating either the contradiction itself or one of its parts and/or reducing it to an absurdity.

In this paper we provide a brief overview of models of a bilingual language system based on publications from American and European sources. Models reviewed in this article are either of great importance in contemporary experimental psycholinguistics or had a signifcant impact on the development of this feld. We give brief descriptions and examples of experimental studies of models of semantic organization of bilinguals' two languages, comprehension (lexical access) and production models.

One of the major areas of research in our Lab is the study of experts and expertise in solving different problems. The “experts” are people that achieved considerable success in any activity. It is worth noting that it does not matter how narrow is the feld of activity: it could be only one type of problems or even just one problem. The main interest in this area involves the differences between experts — specialists in some feld of knowledge, and novices. The main goal is to understand what exactly allows the experts to solve the problems quickly, effciently and with a far smaller number of errors compared to the novices. We are interested in a wide variety of problem situations — from arithmetic and mathematical word problems included in the school program to complex and poorly structured management problems.

In this brief presentation of the structure and goals of the newly formed Laboratory of Oriental Studies and comparative linguistics (School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, RANEPA), it is emphasized that, since all the research projects of the department have to do with historical purposes, its main activity can be loosely defned as «reconstruction of concepts». Our studies in various spheres of Orientalistics (Sinology, Japanology, Buddhology, Iranology) mostly center around translation, analysis, and clarifcation of various culturally important texts of the respective civilizations, whereas our comparative-linguistic studies deal with reconstruction of basic and cultural lexicon for protolanguages on various levels of time depth, many of which can be considered as direct ancestors to those Oriental languages that are well known today as major «concept vehicles» for highly infuential cultures of the East. It may be said that Oriental and historical-linguistic studies at SASH are at the same time trying to «preserve the past», salvaging all the positive legacy left behind by the formerly impressive Soviet Orientalistics, and to «look into the future» by integrating with the most progressive currents in modern Oriental humanities and comparative linguistics abroad.

One of the most important issues in modern historical linguistics is that of verifcation of hypotheses of deep level relationship between various linguistic families. Most noncontroversial theories of genetic relationship do not deal with time depths that surpass 5 or 6 thousand years ago, and the classic comparative method is often found insuffcient to reliably justify suggestions of macrofamily level relationship (such as “Nostratic”). It is therefore necessary to supplement the comparative method with additional techniques, particularly based on progress in the area of phylogenetic modeling, as well as with empirical typological evidence on language change that has been accumulated over several decades of intense research. In this short paper, we briefy describe the main goals and perspectives of the project upon which a team of our researchers is currently working at the Laboratory of Oriental Studies and comparative linguistics: (a) integration of signifcant data on the typology of phonetic and semantic change into the procedure of verifcation of language relationship; (b) improvement of the currently employed algorithms for statistical analysis of the basic lexicon; (c) inclusion of the results of our research in the computer software STARLING, originally designed by Sergei Starostin as a basic tool for historical linguistics purposes, and their approbation on linguistic databases for major linguistic families of Eurasia, Africa, and America that are currently being compiled for the related Web project “The Global Lexicostatistical Database”.

Public reaction to ongoing events is frequently wrapped up in folklore models and texts belonging both to traditional and modern/urban genres. These texts are not just a manifestation of public reaction: they carry out important social functions like adaptation to the changing context, compensation of frustration, building group identity in crisis situations. More than that, they even become a news media themselves, informing the public about events and setting the frames of socially approved reaction to a current situation. This topical folklore can refect the dynamics of attitudes and norms of contemporary society in a much more in-depth and sophisticated way than average sociological research. One of the challenges of studying media-dependent folklore is the vast corpus of very different texts (jokes, rumors, photoshops, videolore, etc) which are generated, changed and transmitted at an incredible speed. This means that researchers of newslore need to shift from case studies to a consistent monitoring. In the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) an interdisciplinary research group has been set up in 2014 in order to investigate these processes.

The article presents theoretical and empirical results of the frst year of the research project “Media Technologies in Contemporary City”. These results include the development of an interdisciplinary methodology that combines approaches of new media studies and urban studies (anthropology of digital city); as well as the results of feld surveys of urban mobility and Moscow museums' digitalization.

The short papers contains a review of the conference, which was held in the School of Actual Studies in the Humanities RANEPA, on 2014, April 3–4.

The paper contains a review of the conference, which was held in the School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, RANEPA, on 2014, September 12–13.

The short paper contains a review of the conference, which was held in the School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, RANEPA, on 2014, October 30–31.