Publications

This paper studies the publication productivity of inbreds and non-inbreds among Russian academics. Existing literature provides ambiguous results on the relationship between inbred status and productivity. This may be explained by the use of different indicators for measuring publication productivity. We use data, which include indicators of both current publication productivity (at a certain point of time) and cumulative productivity (throughout the career) to identify whether inbreds and non-inbreds differ in their productivity. We did not find any difference in current publication productivity of inbreds and non-inbreds. We found, however, a difference in their cumulative publication productivity: non-inbreds are being more productive on an individual level throughout their careers. Although the conclusions are based on the Russian data, the analysis provides an explanation for existing contradictory results on the relationship between academic inbreeding and productivity in general.

People can store thousands of real-world objects in visual long-term memory with high precision. But are these objects stored as unitary, bound entities, as often assumed, or as bundles of separable features? We tested this in several experiments. In the first series of studies, participants were instructed to remember specific exemplars of real-world objects presented in a particular state (e.g., open/closed; full/empty; etc), and then were asked to recognize either which exemplars they had seen (e.g., I saw this coffee mug), or which exemplar-state conjunctions they had seen (e.g., I saw this coffee mug and it was full). Participants had a large number of within-category confusions, for example misremembering which states went with which exemplars, while simultaneously showing strong memory for the features themselves (e.g., which states they had seen; which exemplars they had seen). In a second series of studies, we found further evidence of independence: participants were very good at remembering which exemplars they had seen independently of whether these items were presented in a new or old state, but the same did not occur for features known to be truly holistically represented. Thus, we find through two lines of evidence that the features of real-world objects that support exemplar discrimination and state discrimination are not bound, suggesting visual objects are not inherently unitary entities in memory.

The Big Five Inventory–2 (BFI-2) is a recently published 60-item questionnaire that measures personality traits within the five-factor model framework. An important aspect of the BFI-2 is that it measures the traits at both the domain and facet levels and also controls acquiescence bias via the balanced number of true- and false-keyed items across the domains and facets. The current research evaluates factorial measurement invariance of a Russian version of the BFI-2 across sex and age within samples of 1,024 university students (Study 1) and 1,029 Internet users (Study 2). Across these samples, men scored lower on the domains of negative emotionality and agreeableness and slightly higher on extraversion. Sex differences were also obtained on various facets. In the Internet sample, age correlated modestly with several Big Five domains in accordance with the well-documented maturity principle. The newly developed Russian version of BFI-2 showed good reliability and validity across both samples. Moreover, random intercept exploratory factor analyses showed that the BFI-2 displayed a hierarchical five-domain-15-facet structure that demonstrated strict measurement invariance across sex and age.

The article continues the cycle of works devoted to the role of the home environment in the development of personal qualities necessary for interpersonal interaction. Casual communication is often associated with the distribution of various resources; this process requires personal qualities that not only promote justice receptivity, but also stimulate a tolerant attitude towards its violations. In the context of the characteristics of a friendly home environment, the ability to forgive is discussed. The sample included 590 students (M = 18.7, SD = 1.1, 477 girls and 113 boys). Multiple-scale questionnaires were used: Home Environment Functionality, Home Environment Relevance, and Home Attachment. The psychometric preparation of the Russian version of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale was carried out. As a result of adaptation and verification of the factor structure the Scale includes two subscales (Readiness to forgive and Lack of ruminations) and demonstrates good internal consistency reliability. The results demonstrated a high gender sensitivity. It was found that in the group of young women the characteristics of a friendly home are positively associated with the ability to forgive, and in the group of young men they are associated negatively. The greatest number of correlations is formed by the functional characteristics of the house, and in the group of young men also by attachment to the house. It is stated that in respect of young men the house realizes an intensifying function, and in respect of girls - ennobling; separation from the house is shown to develop the ability to forgive in the young men. It is concluded that the contribution of the home environment to the development of the ability to forgive is determined by the context of human development. Both forgiveness and unforgiveness are adaptive phenomena important for solving interpersonal and social tasks, the content of which is given by the gender of the respondents. The results are consistent with the concepts of moral development of L. Kohlberg and K. Gilligan.

Recent years have witnessed a significant growth in the Russian-speaking community in Montreal, Canada. However, little is currently known about the predictors of psychological adjustment in immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU). In this study we explored the expectations that this group of immigrants (N = 271) hoped to fulfill in their adopted society, the extent to which these expectations have been fulfilled, and the impact of fulfilled expectations on psychological adjustment. We found that the degree of fulfilled expectations was significantly associated with better psychological adjustment independent of personality traits, language proficiency, and acculturation. These findings contribute to the literature on cross-cultural adaptation of immigrants from the FSU and highlight the potential importance of expectations for the study of acculturation more generally.

It is commonly believed that the visual system requires oculomotor information to perceive depth from binocular disparity. However, any effect of the oculomotor information on depth perception is too restricted to explain depth perception under natural viewing conditions. In this study, I describe a computational model that can recover depth from a stereo-pair of retinal images without using any oculomotor information. The model shows that, at least from a computational perspective, any oculomotor information is not necessary for perceiving depth from the stereo retinal images.

‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ is an epic novel, considered one of the most significant works of Russian and world literature. The debate on the authorship of ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ had been surrounding the novel since its first release in 1928 by Mikhail Sholokhov, who was repeatedly accused of plagiarism. The supporters of the plagiarism theory often indicate that the real author of the novel is the Cossack writer, Fyodor Kryukov, who died before ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ was published. In the present study we applied the information-based similarity analysis (Yang et al., 2003a, Linguistic analysis of human heartbeats using frequency and rank order statistics. Physical Review Letters, 90: 108103; Yang et al., 2003b, Information categorization approach to literary authorship disputes. Physica A, 329, 473) and Burrows's Delta (Burrows, 2002, ‘Delta’: a measure of stylistic difference and a guide to likely authorship. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 17(3):267–87) to a corpus of Russian literature of XIX and XX centuries. We next used these two methods to compare ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ to Sholokhov’s and Kryukov’s writings. It was found that Fyodor Kryukov writings are distinct from ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’, whilst Sholokhov’s writings being close to the Don novel. The results also highlight how both information similarity analysis and Delta analysis can be used Russian language.

Unlike traditional teachers, tutors now are much less able to confine their practice to the classroom setting. Herein, we address the challenges of actual tutoring practice at one Master’s degree program comprising offline and online learning activities along with student work placements. Building on the autoethnography and narrative analysis we highlight core themes structuring tutoring experience. We examined the challenges we met. We offer suggestions for tutors supporting students in a blended learning environment, and we argue acknowledgment of different roles and strategies applied by tutors across learning contexts make them more productive and less vulnerable towards conflicting messages of other actors involved in instructional communication.

The current study investigates the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction at work (i.e. autonomy, relatedness, competence) in the relationship between engaging leadership (i.e., inspiring, strengthening, empowering, and connecting) and work engagement. Also, we are proposing and testing an additional need for meaningfulness that plays a similar mediating role. Data were collected from two independent samples from Indonesia (n = 607 state-owned company employees) and Russia (n = 384 civil servants). Results in both samples confirmed that basic psychological need satisfaction (autonomy, relatedness, competence, and meaningfulness) mediated the relationship between engaging leadership and work engagement. Multi-group analysis revealed that the parameters of the mediation model were invariant across both national samples, supporting the cross-national validity of the model. When the mediating role of the satisfaction of the need for meaningfulness was tested separately, this appeared only the case in the Russian and not in the Indonesian sample.

This article presents a short research report on the relationship between perceived antagonism in social relations measured using the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG) scale, life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect. Given that individuals who believe that life is like a zero-sum game are likely to perceive their daily interactions with others as unfair, we expected that individuals with high BZSG experience more negative affect and fewer positive one, resulting in a lower satisfaction with life. In addition, we examined whether country-level BZSG may play a moderating role in these associations. Data were collected from student samples (N = 7146) in 35 countries. Multilevel modelling revealed that perceived social antagonism in social relations is negatively associated with satisfaction with life and that this relationship is mediated by both positive and negative affect at the individual level. The relation of individual BZSG and negative affect on satisfaction with life were weaker in societies with higher country-level BZSG, suggesting that the effects of BZSG may be less detrimental in these countries. These findings extend previous knowledge about predictors of life satisfaction and suggest that social beliefs might also be an important factor that influences subjective well-being. The contribution of the study is that the separate treatment of life satisfaction and positive and negative affect may be helpful in many research situations, particularly from a cross-cultural perspective.

For several decades the Soviet academic psychology community was isolated from the West, yet after the collapse of the Soviet Union each of the 15 countries went their own way in economic, social, and scientific development. The paper analyses publications from post-Soviet countries in psychological journals in 1992–2017, i.e. 26 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the period in question, 15 post-Soviet countries had published 4986 papers in psychology, accounting for less than one percent of the world output in psychological journals. However, the growth of post-Soviet countries’ output in psychological journals, especially that of Russia and Estonia, is observed during this period. Over time, post-Soviet authors began to write more papers in international teams, constantly increasing the proportion of papers in which they are leaders and main contributors. Their papers are still underrepresented in the best journals as well as among the most cited papers in the field and are also cited lower than the world average. However, the impact of psychological papers from post-Soviet countries increases with time. There is a huge diversity between 15 post-Soviet countries in terms of contribution, autonomy, and impact. Regarding the number of papers in psychological journals, the leading nations are Russia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Georgia. Estonia is the leader in autonomy in publishing papers in psychological journals among post-Soviet countries. Papers from Estonia and Georgia are cited higher than the world average, whereas papers from Russia and Ukraine are cited below the world average. Estonia and Georgia also boast a high number of Highly cited papers.

One of the important sources of failures in visual working memory (VWM) is that individual items can interfere with each other. Here, we tested how two causes of such interference—poor categorical distinctiveness and imperfect feature binding—interact. In three experiments, we showed low and high distinctive objects and tested VWM for objects alone, for locations alone and for object-location conjunctions. We found that low object distinctiveness impairs object recognition and increases the number of object-location binding errors. Also, we dissociated the probabilities that these binding errors are due to recognition impairment or a failure of correct binding. Results show that poor distinctiveness increases binding errors rate only due to lacking recognition but not to binding impairment. Together, our findings suggest that object distinction and object-location binding act upon different components of VWM and are separate sources of interference. This study was funded by RSCF #18-18-00334.

The question of whether visual working memory (VWM) stores individual features or bound objects as basic units is actively debated. Evidence exists for both feature-based and object-based storages, as well as hierarchically organized representations maintaining both types of information at different levels. One argument for feature-based storage is that features belonging to different dimensions (e.g., color and orientations) can be stored without interference suggesting independent capacities for every dimension. Here, we studied whether the lack of cross-dimensional interference reflects genuinely independent feature storages or mediated by common objects. In three experiments, participants remembered and recalled the colors and orientations of sets of objects. We independently manipulated set sizes within each feature dimension (making colors and orientations either identical or differing across objects). Critically, we assigned to-be-remembered colors and orientations either to same spatially integrated or to different spatially separated objects. We found that the precision and recall probability within each dimension was not affected by set size manipulations in a different dimension when the features belonged to integrated objects. However, manipulations with color set sizes did affect orientation memory when the features were separated. We conclude therefore that different feature dimensions can be encoded and stored independently but the advantage of the independent storages are mediated at the object-based level. This conclusion is consistent with the idea of hierarchically organized VWM.

We examined the applicability of the hybrid model of creativity, which specifies distinct domains that all express an underlying general creativity factor, in data from representative samples from Central Russia and the North Caucasus (N = 2,046). Using multigroup confirmatory analysis, Study 1 supported the invariance of a model with the six unifactorial domains (i.e., crafts, visual arts, performance, theater, products for work, and machine graphics) at the first level and a general creativity factor at the second level. Study 2 examined socio-demographic characteristics and 19 basic values that might be associated with creative activity. The more modern Central Russian region scored higher on global creativity and on all 6 domains. Of the 4 higher order values in the Schwartz model, Openness to Change values correlated positively and Conservation values correlated negatively with global creativity and with creativity in most domains. Variation across domains in the specific values that predicted creativity revealed that creativity in each domain had some unique motivators. We draw on culture and social structure to explain differences between regions in the value motivators of creativity

The relationships between online social networking (OSN) behaviour and users’ self-esteem are as important as well as ambiguous: Both positive and negative self-esteem can encourage users to engage in OSNs.  This work examined whether personality traits and attitudes toward traits can explain this controversy.  Data from 830 users of a local OSN were analysed.  I hypothesised that extraversion and attitudes toward extraversion eliminated correlations between positive self-esteem and users’ popularity (the number of friends and likes).  In contrast, neuroticism and attitudes toward neuroticism failed to eliminate a negative correlation between self-esteem and an indicator of users’ self-validation (the number of impersonal avatars).  This association also remained significant when conscientiousness as well as negative attitudes toward conscientiousness and agreeableness were controlled.  However, self-esteem did not correlate with the two other self-validation indicators―the number of posts and portraits.  This study casts doubt on the possibility of direct associations between positive self-esteem and users’ popularity beyond such factors as extraversion.  Nevertheless, it lends partial support to the association between negative self-esteem and users’ self-validation such as the use of impersonal avatars even when other personality characteristics are considered.

The contribution of the motor cortex to the semantic retrieval of verbs remains a subject of debate in neuroscience. Here, we examined whether additional engagement of the cortical motor system was required when access to verbs semantics was hindered during a verb generation task. We asked participants to produce verbs related to presented noun cues that were either strongly associated with a single verb to prompt fast and effortless verb retrieval, or were weakly associated with multiple verbs and more difficult to respond to. Using power suppression of magnetoencephalography beta oscillations (15–30 Hz) as an index of cortical activation, we performed a whole‐brain analysis in order to identify the cortical regions sensitive to the difficulty of verb semantic retrieval. Highly reliable suppression of beta oscillations occurred 250 ms after the noun cue presentation and was sustained until the onset of verbal response. This was localized to multiple cortical regions, mainly in the temporal and frontal lobes of the left hemisphere. Crucially, the only cortical regions where beta suppression was sensitive to the task difficulty, were the higher order motor areas on the medial and lateral surfaces of the frontal lobe. Stronger activation of the premotor cortex and supplementary motor area accompanied the effortful verb retrieval and preceded the preparation of verbal responses for more than 500 ms, thus, overlapping with the time window of verb retrieval from semantic memory. Our results suggest that reactivation of verb‐related motor plans in higher order motor circuitry promotes the semantic retrieval of target verbs.

ABSTRACT

Background: Two approaches to the explanation of dissociations of symptoms were established in the history of neuropsychology: through the structural changes and through the changes of activity form. The theoretical origins of these explanations are related to the two methodological traditions in psychology: elementaristic and holistic. In this study, the advantages of the elementaristic and the holistic approach to the explanation of dissociated neuropsychological agraphia symptoms are discussed.

Aims: The goal of our study was to reveal the variability of writing disorders following sensory agraphia depending on performance in writing tasks of different types. We hypothesise that manifestations of psychological disorders in Wernicke’s agraphia vary in different types of writing tasks:

1.1. We expect the dissociated symptoms of Wernicke’s agraphia to vary in tasks that actualise different culturally defined functions of writing;

1.2. Tasks actualising culturally determined functions of writing would lead to specific differences of symptoms in Wernicke’s agraphia compared with the performance on traditional diagnostic tests.

Methods & Procedures: The study involved 29 individuals with Wernicke’s agraphia due to left hemisphere stroke in the basin of the left middle cerebral artery. To identify agraphia symptoms, tasks traditionally applied in neuropsychological diagnostics of writing were used, representing typical cultural-historical functions of writing (communicative, mnestic, and regulatory). Analysis with the Chi-square Friedman test showed that the differences for all types of error rates were statistically significant (p = .001), which allowed the Wilcoxon test for further pairwise comparison ratios of errors in written tasks.

Outcomes & Results: Two approaches to the explanation of dissociations of symptoms have been used – through structural changes (elementaristic approach) and changes of a person’s activity form (holistic approach). The advantages of the holistic approach were the most evident while analysing the significant prevalence of errors in orthography in the regulatory task compared with the task of sentence composition. These tasks did not differ in their structural components, so the elementaristic approach did not explain the resulting dissociation. The explanation of this phenomenon comes from the psychological importance of the cultural function of writing using a permissive psychological strategy.

Conclusions: The holistic approach can be a valuable complement to the more widely utilised elementaristic approach. Despite the fact that a holistic approach is less common in modern clinical neuropsychology, its advantages are evident in the analysis of dissociation symptoms within the same syndrome when performing identical tasks in a set of involved neuropsychological components.

Haptics plays an important role in emotion perception. However, most studies of the affective aspects of haptics have investigated emotional valence rather than emotional categories. In the present study, we explored the associations of different textures with six basic emotions: fear, anger, happiness, disgust, sadness and surprise. Participants touched twenty-one different textures and evaluated them using six emotional scales. Additionally, we explored whether individual differences in participants' levels of alexithymia are related to the intensity of emotions associated with touching the textures. Alexithymia is a trait related to difficulties in identifying, describing and communicating emotions to others. The findings show that people associated touching different textures with distinct emotions. Textures associated with each of the basic emotions were identified. The study also revealed that a higher alexithymia level corresponds to a higher intensity of associations between textures and the emotions of disgust, anger and sadness.

Medial frontal cortex is currently viewed as the main hub of the performance monitoring system; upon detection of an error committed, it establishes functional connections with brain regions involved in task performance, thus leading to neural adjustments in them. Previous research has identified targets of such adjustments in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior cortical regions, motor cortical areas, and subthalamic nucleus. Yet most of such studies involved visual tasks with relatively moderate cognitive load and strong dependence on motor inhibition – thus highlighting sensory, executive and motor effects while underestimating sensorimotor transformation and related aspects of decision making. Currently there is ample evidence that posterior parietal cortical areas are involved in task-specific neural processes of decision making (including evidence accumulation, sensorimotor transformation, attention, etc.) – yet, to our knowledge, no EEG studies have demonstrated post-error increase in functional connectivity in the theta-band between midfrontal and posterior parietal areas during performance on non-visual tasks. In the present study, we recorded EEG while subjects were performing an auditory version of the cognitively demanding attentional condensation task; this task involves rather non-straightforward stimulus-to-response mapping rules, thus, creating increased load on sensorimotor transformation. We observed strong pre-response alpha-band suppression in the left parietal area, which presumably reflected involvement of the posterior parietal cortex in task-specific decision-making processes. Negative feedback was followed by increased midfrontal theta-band power and increased functional coupling in the theta band between midfrontal and left parietal regions. This could be interpreted as activation of the performance monitoring system and top–down influence of this system on the posterior parietal regions involved in decision making, respectively. This inter-site coupling related to negative feedback was stronger for subjects who tended to commit errors with slower response times. Generally, current findings support the idea that slower errors are related to the state of outcome uncertainty caused by failures of task-specific processes, associated with posterior parietal regions.

Although the authors propose a useful model for thinking about the structure of memory and memory deficits, their distinction between entities and relational encoding is incompatible with data showing that even individual objects – prototypical ‘entities’ – are made up of distinct features which require binding. Thus, ‘entity’ and ‘relational’ brain regions may need to solve fundamentally the same problems.