No 4 (2016)

The intellectual and psychomotor development of children using the physical culture aids is the critical task of recent decades facing parents, teaching employees and medical professionals. Autokinetic movements and actions are assured by the work of specific brain structures and are numbered among the advanced mental functions of a man. The extension of motoric repertoire forms the prerequisites for the acquisition of spatial orientation, visuomotor and auditory attention, memory and the correction of tonus-strength balance of muscles. The efferent systems the cortical parts of which form the sensorimotor zone of cerebral cortex belong to the actuating mechanisms of autokinetic movements and actions. The paper considers the basic level of motor development and its influence on the formation of superior psychical functions of children and gives the characteristic of the concept of “proprioceptive dysfunction”.

During the scientific methodological analysis, the authors gathered the material proving that physical activity is the basis for current and future health, physical and psychical development of a child.

The novelty of the work is in the considering the regulation and control of motor sphere of the preschool and primary school age children on the basis of individual peculiarities of the functioning of central nervous system.

The understanding of the importance of sensorimotor development will allow specialists in the sphere of physical culture to develop the system of correction-educational measures promoting motor, cognitive, psychical and physical development of schoolchildren.

The relevance of this paper is caused by the new requirements to the educational process, and the monitoring and evaluation system in particular. Control is becoming increasingly important, both for teachers and the students. Monitoring events are changing their character shifting from traditional forms to the authentic ones – those involving the use of relevant assessment tools. It is shown that pedagogical tests designed as a specific set of tasks make it possible to give an objective, comparable and even quantitative assessment of the quality of training in the specified educational area. The paper describes the basic types of test tasks aimed at checking various indicators of student performance. The authors analyze the long-term use of pedagogical tests to monitor student performance of the Department of mathematics and Applied Informatics at Samara State Technical University. The paper presents the data analysis of the statistical characteristics of certain tests before and after the alterations made, which reveals the opportunity for correction and updating of the test tasks while preserving the quality indicators of their reliability and validity. It proves the validity of the applied tests. It is shown that the creative abilities of the students can be measured by means of tests of the third and fourth levels, which use the transformation of academic content and interdisciplinary connections.

Long-term practice of using a complex of different combinations of test tasks allows talking about testing as an effective means of objective monitoring and make the conclusion about the appropriateness of pedagogical tests application to monitor student performance.

The relevance of the research presented in the paper is caused by the fact that the issue of joint activities is not a new one in the psychological science, the debate about its structural elements continues to this day. The authors considered the works of Russian and foreign researchers on joint activities in the process of solving tasks and showed the characteristic features of the joint activities participants in the process of solving tasks. The authors draw the attention to the fact that the researchers often ignore the definition of the concept of “task” and the description is reduced to the problem situation. The consideration of the joint activities in the context of tasks solving is not unimportant. Let us note, that the tasks faced by the employees of the organization, can be of different nature and content, which involves the participation of various experts when solving each new issue. In this regard, the issue of the organization of effective interaction between the organization’s employees so that every task was solved efficiently and as soon as possible becomes relevant. Under the condition of the high level of professional knowledge, this index will be affected by the set of personal characteristics of each participant of the interaction in the process of solving a task.

The paper describes the theoretical model of joint activities, as well as the results of factor analysis, which allowed empirical validation of the theoretical model. The authors emphasized the types of joint activities in the process of solving a task: joint activities themselves, cooperation and cooperative interaction. Each type of joint activity is given a comprehensive description basing on the following parameters: the interaction time, the degree of coherence, and the objectives achievement. The authors considered the components of the process of joint activities when solving a task typical for each its type: cognitive, personal, behavioral. The cognitive component includes the intelligence and the creativity. The structural elements of the personal component are the personality orientation and its motivation. The group component is represented by the group roles, special aspects of communication between the participants of the interaction and the willingness to cooperate.

The paper studies the positive psychological capabilities of the convicted with the long terms for serving punishment. The author presents the statistical information of the Federal Service for Execution of Punishment (Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia) for the year 2015. The author highlights the importance of studying the viability characteristics of the convicts with the long terms for serving punishment and defines the terms of punishment, which are considered as the long-term (over 10 years). The paper reveals the history of the discovery of the hardiness and its components phenomenon by S. Maddi and S. Kobasa. The hardness is considered as a personal characteristic, which serves as the resource for the prevention of negative personality changes in the extreme conditions of a correctional institution. The author presents the theoretical review of publications and studies concerning the state of knowledge of hardiness in foreign and Russian science and describes the structure of hardiness and its relationship with other similar features that characterize a person’s ability to overcome successfully the hardships and to exist effectively in the extreme conditions. The paper presents foreign and Russian techniques for hardiness measurement. The author describes in detail a psychodiagnostic survey of 532 convicts (495 males and 37 females) with a long term of imprisonment from nine regions of Russia, who serve sentences for serious crimes, carries out the comparative analysis and specifies the hardiness features of the convicts with the long terms for serving punishment depending on their sex. The paper presents the results of the study of coping strategies, psychological defenses, determines the dominant types of coping strategies and psychological defenses of the convicts with different levels of hardiness. The author reveals the prospects of the application of the technique for measuring hardiness of the convicts in the terms of long isolation from the society. The paper gives the data of the survey of correctional officers on the subject of the. The author considers the promising directions of the study of hardiness and its components of the convicts with the long terms for serving punishment.

The paper proves theoretically and supports empirically the psychological aspects of emotional behavior promoting the prevention and overcoming of emotional burnout syndrome of medical professionals. The professional activities of medical specialists are noted both for a large number of communicative contacts and for the complex specific character of relations with people. Negative consequences of relations with the patients are manifested in the modification of emotional and personal sphere of doctors and frequently cause the professional deformation of a personality, the loss of efficiency of professional activities execution and the high risks of professional errors. This research considers the emotional burnout syndrome as the complex notion: as the dynamic process that develops in time and is characterized by the increasing intensity of its demonstration, and as the structure of emotional-personal symptoms. More than a quarter of selected subset representatives demonstrated the positive dynamics of emotional burnout syndrome development in the formedness of its particular phases. Among the factors of the emotional behavior of medical professionals, the author considers the psychological characteristics of behavior in frustration situations and the strategies of coping behavior in a stressful situation. The author determined the evidential interrelations between the formedness of emotional burnout symptoms and the manifestation of non-constructive coping strategies of “confrontation”, “escape-avoidance” and “distancing”. The inverse relationships are demonstrated between the constructive coping strategies of “positive reappraisal” and “problem-solving planning” and the levels of formedness of particular symptoms of the emotional burnout syndrome. The correlation analysis determined that the indices of the emotional burnout syndrome intensity and extrapunitive and intrapunitive manifestations were connected by the direct correlation dependence while the inverse correlation was manifested between the impunitive methods of frustration behavior and the emotional burnout syndrome intensity. 

The purpose of the paper is to review the results of the research focused on the study of the personnel motivation through the context of the theory of self-determination of E. Deci and R. Ryan, which is currently one of the most conceptually developed and relevant motivational theories in psychology. While considering the works, the author analyzed the factors that can be considered as the key factors for effective professional activity: the subjective well-being, the ability to display initiative and self-fulfillment, the balance between the work and family self-efficacy. Meeting the basic needs for the competence, autonomy, and interrelations with other people considered as the key needs in the self-determination theory of E. Deci and R. Ryan is the important prerequisite for the optimum performance of an employee.

The author identified the individual types of professional motivation, and, based on the theory of causal orientations, considered the features of personnel management, which cause the development of a particular type of motivation. The development of internal autonomy and self-determination, which influence allows a person to recognize his or her own personal characteristics and to develop in harmony with them, gives the best results. It is caused by the fact, that the predominance of internal motivation gives the sense of initiative and the ability to influence the surrounding reality, to change the vector of own lives’ orientation. Professional motivation developed in accordance with the self-determination theory is the important predictor of job satisfaction, subjective well-being, job involvement and organization’s loyalty.

The paper gives the results of the studies whose aim was to develop the complex of recommendations for practical implementation of managerial measures aimed at the increasing of the employees’ self-determination as the main predictor of high performance of work activities.