Краткое содержание статей на английском языке.

O.V. Naumenko

Making decisions in solving complicated cognitive tasks

Cognitive mechanisms responsible for making decisions during solving difficult cognitive tasks are the point of our research. The hypothesis is: a man can quickly and correctly solve difficult cognitive tasks, being not quite aware of solving-process and reasons for making a decision about the answer. 3 experiments show: if complicated arithmetical or logical tasks are represented to the participant, but s/he hasn’t enough time for thinking them over and has to “guess”, which answer is right, the number of right answers chosen will be similar to random. The participant solving the same tasks in a week, we find out: the choice of the answer depends on the choice made in this task before. Participants don’t remember their decisions, made in previous series. So the after-effect and implicit learning phenomena observed let us conclude: the participant does distinguish between right and wrong answers and makes a special decision about realizing/not-realizing them.

S.F. Sergeev

Cognitive processes under hypnotic induction conditions

The aim of the given study is to explore the opportunities of influence on the speed of information perception, short-term memory bounds, passing the perceptual and semantic interference effects under hypnotic state. The available investigations are contradictory and often include the elements of hypnosis mythology which suggest supposedly unbounded opportunities of the hypnotist instructions influence on the psychical processes under hypnosis. The series of experiments on the group of 16 highly hypnoable subjects (both men and women, from 20 to 23 years old) have been conducted.

The normal functioning of the human perceptual system on all levels of its organization under hypnotic state was shown. Hypnotic induction does not afford to extend the range of short-term memory over the one, seen in the normal awaken state. It’s impossible to release from perceptual and semantic interference effects, which manifest independent on the form and on the matter of the hypnotist’s instructions. At the same time hypnotic induction affords to increase the speed of figure information perception on average 1,5 times more as background values. However those values can be also achieved in the normal state, after a number of practice exercises.

N.A. Ivanova

The amazing adventures of recurring errors

In the process of learning

The demonstration of the work of consciousness in the process of learning is the appearance of the recurring errors which appear while one decides some simple perceptive-motor task. This experimental study is devoted to the investigation of influence of the work of consciousness on the process of learning. We explore this influence by means of the analysis of the errors recurring with the high accuracy. In this experiment people had to shoot with a rocket at the moving target. Every subject performed 15 series in 200 shoots. The program registered the accuracy of the hits in pixels. The results display that the most people tend to repeat their answers with a high level of accuracy (to 1 pixel) and these errors appear statistically more frequently than occasionally. The frequent appearance of this sort of errors while we are learning is evidence of the influence of the consciousness on the process of learning. The high significant correlation between the dynamics of learning and the dynamics of appearance of recurring errors was found. The precision of the repeating of the answers shows us the quantities and velocities, which our consciousness work with while processing the information.

N.V. Moroshkina