Revealing children’s abilities and talents in the context of digitalization is one of the urgent problems of modern psychology. The first signs of giftedness may appear early, already at the stage of preschool childhood, when its development largely depends on the conditions of the microenvironment, especially in the family. Digitalization processes set a new direction for the development of the system of family education and training of preschoolers, causing the emergence of both new opportunities and new risks in discovering children’s talents. This is a complex area of scientific research, which still remains little explored. The study was aimed at identifying the psychological characteristics of using digital devices (tablets/computers) as components of a family educational microenvironment for the development of older preschoolers with signs of general giftedness. In accordance with the conceptual provisions put forward by A.M. Matyushkin, giftedness was considered as a prerequisite for the development of a creative personality. The study involved 200 children of senior preschool age (Mage = 6.7, SD = 0.307, including 98 boys) and their parents (mostly mothers - 166). The method for diagnosing intellectual abilities (MEDIA) was used. Intellectual and creative activity as well as creative thinking of the children was studied during a diagnostic game lesson using structured observation and expert assessments. The parents of the preschoolers were surveyed using a specially designed questionnaire containing questions about the use of a tablet/computer (frequency, time, programs/games) at home for the development their children as well as questions about their interests and hobbies. The use of diagnostic techniques made it possible to single out a group (N = 24) of children with signs of giftedness among the preschoolers as well as a group of their peers for subsequent comparative analysis (their intellectual and creative abilities were less pronounced). It was found that almost all the children with signs of giftedness (95.8%), like their peers, had experience of using a tablet/computer at home for developmental purposes. The frequency of using digital devices by the preschoolers with signs of giftedness was less than that of their peers. With the observed variety of developing computer programs/games used, their total number was less in the group of the gifted preschoolers compared to the group of their peers. Partial correspondence of digital content to the interests and hobbies of the children was revealed. Most often, when choosing computer programs/games for them, their parents pursued the goal of preparing them for school. It was recognized as necessary to provide psychological assistance to the parents of the preschoolers in solving the issues of using digital devices to develop children’s abilities and talents. The results of the study can be used to develop practical recommendations based on an integrated approach to the disclosure of giftedness at the stage of preschool childhood, taking into account the digitalization of the family microenvironment.

The article touches upon the concept of manipulation, its basic characteristics, and its role in the modern informational society. The authors point out that alongside the informational function, media texts carry out the pragmatic function, namely, they manipulate the public opinion. According to the authors, manipulation is a more negative than positive phenomenon. Besides, there is a definition of radiotext and some considerations concerning its specific features as compared to other types of mediatexts, namely, wide audience, no video, but only audio, etcetera. British Broadcasting Corporation radiotexts have been chosen by the authors as the object of analysis. The authors have considered some historical aspects that determine the manipulative character of radio news. Also, special attention is paid to their structural and linguistic (grammatical, lexical, prosodic) features which are aimed at forming listeners’ opinion about current events. A number of examples from radiotexts are given and their analysis is conducted. The authors state that alongside the text structure and the choice of material itself much attention should be paid to linguistic means, among which prosody is of the greatest importance. Such elements of prosody as tempo, loudness, the use of various tones in final and non-final prosodic groups and the speaker’s timber influence the audience view of the world and draw the listeners’ attention to particular aspects. At the end of the article the authors make a conclusion that taking into consideration the specific features of radiotexts, linguistic, mainly prosodic means play the leading role in the process of manipulation.

This paper describes personal reasoning peculiarities of Russian undergraduate students viewed through the prism of their culture and their psycho-typical characteristics. The experimental study showed specificity of argument formation in the students’ reasoning about their cultural values. Our experiment identified the respondents’ poles within the cognitive style ‘abstract / concrete conceptualization’ based on their verbalization of the primary values. Four levels of concept abstraction were detected and proved by the students’ verbal manifestations: the resulting students’ texts showed remarkable differences between the poles concerning preferences of argument exposition, both in its construction schemes and in the choice of components of the arguments. We thus state that the degree of variability of the students’ value assessment correlates with the degree of formation of the mechanism of differentiation in value orientations. Our recommendations for teaching reasoning concern: linguistically based principles of student cognitive differentiation which minimize distractive factors; choice of teaching tasks depending on the student specific conceptualization pole; and ways of activating differentiation and integration operations in reasoning. In a broader context of education, students’ individual peculiarities and cognitive preferences should be focused on training which stimulate the students’ learning interest.

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