Human Abilities and Mental Resources in the World of Global Changes
Abstract
Abstract
The conference was held on November 30-31 in Moscow. Hosted by the Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, it passed in mixed format including offline and online presentations via Zoom. Among the conference’s topics were: human abilities and mental resources and their development; variants of life in post-traumatic stress disorder and coping ability; digital technologies in psychodiagnostics; professional, spiritual, chemical abilities; modelling cognitive and communicative processes; the youth startup “Cognitive science and virtual reality” etc. The conference proceedings (in Russian with English abstracts) are available on the conference website: http://druzhinin.ipran.ru/
Discussion
The conference is hosted by the Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences on a quinquennial basis since 2005. This year was marked by the grown interest from the academic community stimulated by focusing on poignant topics revealed by COVID-19 pandemic. There were about 200 presentations of different form carefully selected while the number of applications for the conference exceeded 250. Besides Russian authors there were 12 contributions from Armenia, Belarus, Israel and Ukraine.
Director of the Institute of Psychology, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr D.V. Ushakov inaugurated the conference; then three keynote lectures took place. Member of Russian Academy of Education, Dr V.D. Shadrikov presented his view on the explanation in psychology; corresponding member of Russian Academy of Education, Dr A.V. Karpov drew a resource perspective on metacognitive determinants of personality’s professional destructions; Dr M.A. Kholodnaya discussed theoretical and methodological implications of the psychological indicators’ nonlinear nature for studies of mental resources.
The topicality of the main conference’s focus is caused by urge for analysis of the state of affairs in psychology of human abilities and mental resources facing the digital transformation of ordinary people’s existence as well as of entire domains of social life. Many of conference sections were also marked by socio-psychological challenges and mental health issues induced by pandemic restrictions and isolation, such as substitution of immediate social communications by its digital version and personal space deformation.
Thus, the phenomenology of difficult life situation experience is analysed in N.V. Tarabrina’s perspective differentiating the everyday stress from the traumatic one. Researches show that the potential post-traumatic stress disorder as well as coping strategies depend largely on what Druzhinin have called “variants of life”, term describing existential choice of individual life path.
Another concerned topic was the search of hardiness and resiliency resources by townspeople differing by living conditions. The urban environment may or may not provide such resources depending on where the respondent lives: in Moscow residents negative environmental factors are compensated by positive ones (good job, developed infrastructure, beautiful and comfortable living space etc.), they are proud of their city while young people from Siberian city of Surgut don’t find it promising for further life and work.
Digitalisation of life also actualised many conference’s topics, such as cognitive and social factors of respondents’ interaction in reality and social media. Psychodiagnostics of abilities and mental resources has enriched by procedures and methods based on digital technologies. Intelligence research on macro level shows its important role in human capital and highlights the perspectives of AI technologies in education.
A heated debate unfolded over the scientific method issues in psychology. According to Dr A.V. Yurevitch scientific explication can be only reductionist one, assuming transition to another level of generalisation and thus transcendence of the studied system. While Dr V.A. Mazilov warns agains reduction of psychological to non-psychological, Dr Shadrikov points out that many scientific fields can have the same object, but approach it from different perspectives, thus combining their findings may be fruitful for the clarification of the issue’s essence.
The great number of studies presented on the topic of general abilities was inspired by the work of Druzhinin who had opened many perspectives in the field. Just to cite examples, he had raised the intelligence and communication problem; proposed to divide mental properties into point, linear and multidimensional ones; coined the term “cognitive resource” defined as the number of elements that can be simultaneously presented in the person’s mind. Numerous facts of splitting of indicators of intelligence and creativity give evidence in favour of their multidimensional models as more coherent to the phenomena’s nature. Discussion between Dr Karpov, Dr Kholodnaya, Dr E.V. Volkova and Dr V.A. Tolochek pointed out the applicability of the equilibrium dynamic systems principle in psychology.
The topic of chemical abilities was first held in the framework of psychological conference, bringing together specialists in psychology, pedagogy, chemistry, genetics and medicine. The concept of sense of substance as the core chemical ability was vividly discussed as well as methods of its research. It has been demonstrated that specially organised educational environment is needed for the enrichment of individual experience of interaction with substances. Some findings presented on chemical abilities’ genetic markers are inconsistent and need further investigation
Spiritual abilities studies presented at the conference gained attention as a new direction in scientific research. The psychological construct of spiritual abilities and their theoretical model was discussed as well as spiritual intelligence, spiritual personality, spiritual life, spirituality, wisdom, self-esteem, self-regulation, inner harmony, conscience, reflexion etc. Empirical studies were presented on spiritual and moral man’s ideal, relationships of spiritual and moral qualities with empathy, self-regulation and personality’s semantic sphere.
Modern approaches to modelling cognitive and communicative processes were also presented: to cite one example, an informational-Bayesian model of complex objects visual perception’s language by V.M. Shendyapin. Amongst conference topics were also: general laws and individual variation of the formation and implementation of behaviour; analysis of history of abilities and giftedness research; development of mental resources and abilities in the modern socio-cultural context; professional abilities and personal professional self-realisation in modern organisation. The conference was hosted for the first time the youth startup “Cognitive science and virtual reality”.
The conference proceedings (in Russian with English abstracts) were published in digital format and is available on the conference website: http://druzhinin.ipran.ru/
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The conference was held on November 30-31 in Moscow. Hosted by the Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, it passed in mixed format including offline and online presentations via Zoom. Among the conference’s topics were: human abilities and mental resources and their development; variants of life in post-traumatic stress disorder and coping ability; digital technologies in psychodiagnostics; professional, spiritual, chemical abilities; modelling cognitive and communicative processes; the youth startup “Cognitive science and virtual reality” etc. The conference proceedings (in Russian with English abstracts) are available on the conference website: http://druzhinin.ipran.ru/
The conference is hosted by the Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences on a quinquennial basis since 2005. This year was marked by the grown interest from the academic community stimulated by focusing on poignant topics revealed by COVID-19 pandemic. There were about 200 presentations of different form carefully selected while the number of applications for the conference exceeded 250. Besides Russian authors there were 12 contributions from Armenia, Belarus, Israel and Ukraine.
Director of the Institute of Psychology, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr D.V. Ushakov inaugurated the conference; then three keynote lectures took place. Member of Russian Academy of Education, Dr V.D. Shadrikov presented his view on the explanation in psychology; corresponding member of Russian Academy of Education, Dr A.V. Karpov drew a resource perspective on metacognitive determinants of personality’s professional destructions; Dr M.A. Kholodnaya discussed theoretical and methodological implications of the psychological indicators’ nonlinear nature for studies of mental resources.
The topicality of the main conference’s focus is caused by urge for analysis of the state of affairs in psychology of human abilities and mental resources facing the digital transformation of ordinary people’s existence as well as of entire domains of social life. Many of conference sections were also marked by socio-psychological challenges and mental health issues induced by pandemic restrictions and isolation, such as substitution of immediate social communications by its digital version and personal space deformation.
Thus, the phenomenology of difficult life situation experience is analysed in N.V. Tarabrina’s perspective differentiating the everyday stress from the traumatic one. Researches show that the potential post-traumatic stress disorder as well as coping strategies depend largely on what Druzhinin have called “variants of life”, term describing existential choice of individual life path.
Another concerned topic was the search of hardiness and resiliency resources by townspeople differing by living conditions. The urban environment may or may not provide such resources depending on where the respondent lives: in Moscow residents negative environmental factors are compensated by positive ones (good job, developed infrastructure, beautiful and comfortable living space etc.), they are proud of their city while young people from Siberian city of Surgut don’t find it promising for further life and work.
Digitalisation of life also actualised many conference’s topics, such as cognitive and social factors of respondents’ interaction in reality and social media. Psychodiagnostics of abilities and mental resources has enriched by procedures and methods based on digital technologies. Intelligence research on macro level shows its important role in human capital and highlights the perspectives of AI technologies in education.
A heated debate unfolded over the scientific method issues in psychology. According to Dr A.V. Yurevitch scientific explication can be only reductionist one, assuming transition to another level of generalisation and thus transcendence of the studied system. While Dr V.A. Mazilov warns agains reduction of psychological to non-psychological, Dr Shadrikov points out that many scientific fields can have the same object, but approach it from different perspectives, thus combining their findings may be fruitful for the clarification of the issue’s essence.
The great number of studies presented on the topic of general abilities was inspired by the work of Druzhinin who had opened many perspectives in the field. Just to cite examples, he had raised the intelligence and communication problem; proposed to divide mental properties into point, linear and multidimensional ones; coined the term “cognitive resource” defined as the number of elements that can be simultaneously presented in the person’s mind. Numerous facts of splitting of indicators of intelligence and creativity give evidence in favour of their multidimensional models as more coherent to the phenomena’s nature. Discussion between Dr Karpov, Dr Kholodnaya, Dr E.V. Volkova and Dr V.A. Tolochek pointed out the applicability of the equilibrium dynamic systems principle in psychology.
The topic of chemical abilities was first held in the framework of psychological conference, bringing together specialists in psychology, pedagogy, chemistry, genetics and medicine. The concept of sense of substance as the core chemical ability was vividly discussed as well as methods of its research. It has been demonstrated that specially organised educational environment is needed for the enrichment of individual experience of interaction with substances. Some findings presented on chemical abilities’ genetic markers are inconsistent and need further investigation
Spiritual abilities studies presented at the conference gained attention as a new direction in scientific research. The psychological construct of spiritual abilities and their theoretical model was discussed as well as spiritual intelligence, spiritual personality, spiritual life, spirituality, wisdom, self-esteem, self-regulation, inner harmony, conscience, reflexion etc. Empirical studies were presented on spiritual and moral man’s ideal, relationships of spiritual and moral qualities with empathy, self-regulation and personality’s semantic sphere.
Modern approaches to modelling cognitive and communicative processes were also presented: to cite one example, an informational-Bayesian model of complex objects visual perception’s language by V.M. Shendyapin. Amongst conference topics were also: general laws and individual variation of the formation and implementation of behaviour; analysis of history of abilities and giftedness research; development of mental resources and abilities in the modern socio-cultural context; professional abilities and personal professional self-realisation in modern organisation. The conference was hosted for the first time the youth startup “Cognitive science and virtual reality”.
The conference proceedings (in Russian with English abstracts) were published in digital format and is available on the conference website: http://druzhinin.ipran.ru/