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Background. This article reports on the results of an empirical study of interrelationships between indicators of decision-making strategies (indexed by the Iowa Gambling Task, IGT) and traits of tolerance and intolerance for uncertainty that capture the unity of cognitive and personality components of situational representations.Objective. Our study tested the hypothesis that overcoming uncertainty in decision making goes beyond cognitive representations of the task but instead is rooted in the construction of the amodal image of an uncertain situation that captures the meaning regulation of perception and action. We hypothesized that when a person is faced with multi-stage decisions, their strategies reflect the contribution of individual differences in attitudes towards uncertainty.Design. Using data obtained from n = 60 typically developing adults (68% men; M age = 30.58), we examined the contribution of tolerance/intolerance for uncertainty to a variety of IGT dependent variables at five different stages of the game.Results. The data was analyzed using the mixed linear model method as implemented in the lme4 package for R. The results indicated that tolerance for uncertainty significantly contributes to the initial level of behavioral risk, ensuring readiness for decision making under uncertainty. Conclusion.Tolerance for uncertainty plays an important role in early stages of orientation in an uncertain modeled game situation, and contributes to the productive development of probabilistic expectations. Intolerance for uncertainty, on the other hand, was shown to contribute to risk in decision making after trial failure, potentially limiting learning in uncertain conditions through risk aversion.

Background. Choice, under conditions of uncertainty, is mediated by integral dynamic regulatory systems that represent hierarchies of cognitive and personality processes. As such, individual decision-making patterns can be studied in the context of intellectual and personality potential. This article presents the results of a cross-cultural comparison of personality characteristics, such as coping with uncertainty, emotional intelligence, and academic achievement, between Azerbaijani and Russian university students.Objective. We aimed at establishing metric invariance and at highlighting relationships between emotional intelligence and the scales of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (MDMQ).Design. Azerbaijani and Russian student samples were selected for this study due to the almost identical educational programs offered by Moscow State University to students in Moscow and its branch in Baku. Coping with uncertainty was measured by the MDMQ, emotional intelligence by the EmIn questionnaire, and academic achievement by GPA scores. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify factor structure invariance and congruence.Results. The congruence of factor structures for both questionnaires was verified. For the MDMQ four-factor structure for both samples was confirmed. For the EmIn questionnaire, invariance for two scales was established -"Understanding other people's emotions" and "Managing own emotions". Relationships among personality traits, gender, age, and academic achievements are explained for the Lomonosov Moscow State University students in Moscow (Russia) and its branch in Baku (Azerbaijan). No crosscultural differences were found for emotional intelligence and productive coping (VigiEmotional intelligence, patterns for coping with decisional conflict… 115 lance). A cultural difference was established in unproductive coping preference for Buck Passing. A similarity between the cultures was captured in the relationship of higher emotional intelligence (EQ) scores to higher Vigilance scores and to lower levels of unproductive coping patterns. Vigilance was a predictor of academic achievement, but only in the Russian sample.Conclusion. The similarity of the educational systems, as both samples studied similar programs, demonstrates very few cross-cultural differences.

Impoverished early care environments are associated with developmental deficits in children raised in institutional settings. Despite the accumulation of evidence regarding deficits in general cognitive functioning in this population, less is known about the impact of institutionalization on language development at the level of brain and behavior. We examined language outcomes in young adults and adolescents raised in institutions (n = 23) as compared to their socioeconomic status and age peers raised in biological families (n = 24) using a behavioral language assessment and linguistic event-related potentials (ERPs). Controlling for intelligence, adults with a history of institutionalization demonstrated deficits in lexical and grammatical development and spelling. Analyses of ERP data revealed significant group differences in the dynamic processing of linguistic stimuli. Adults with a history of institutionalization displayed reduced neural sensitivity to violations of word expectancy, leading to reduced condition effects for temporo-spatial factors that tentatively corresponded to the N200, P300/N400, and phonological mismatch negativity. The results suggest that language is a vulnerable domain in adults with a history of institutionalization, the deficits in which are not explained by general developmental delays, and point to the pivotal role of early linguistic environment in the development of the neural networks involved in language processing.

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The article presents the results of the development and approbation of the scale of psychological essentialism (belief in invariability of group membership). The results of confirmatory factor analysis conducted on eight different groups (ethnic (Russians / Tajiks / Jews), gender groups (men / women), homosexuals (gay / lesbians) and religious groups (Orthodox / Muslim)) (n = 897), demonstrated the good fit to empirical data. The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the different groups measured on the scale, can be compared with each other within a single category. The scale shows good convergent and discriminant validity. On the one hand, psychological essentialism associated with group entitativity, group identification, right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation and justification the social hierarchy; on the other hand there are not correlation between the psychological essentialism and open to experience and attitude to novelty.