Many domestic and foreign observers have claimed that Russians have a unique constellation of personality traits that mirrors their distinctive historical and cultural experience. To examine the hypothesized uniqueness of Russian personality, members of the Russian Character and Personality Survey collected data from 39 samples in 33 administrative areas of the Russian Federation. Respondents ( N = 7,065) identified an ethnically Russian adult or college-aged man or woman whom they knew well and rated the target using the Russian observer-rating version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. The mean personality profile of Russians was very similar to the international average based on 50 different countries, debunking the myth of a unique Russian soul.The small variations from world norms did not converge with depictions of Russian national character in fiction and the scholarly literature. New items intended to capture distinctive, emic aspects of Russian personality provided no new information beyond the familiar Big Five dimensions. Religion, ethnicity, and beliefs about the uniqueness of the Russian character and the malleability of personality traits had little effect on personality ratings. Perceptions of the Russian soul do not seem to be based on the personality traits of Russians.

Introduction. The problem of the digital divide between different generations and the aggravation of intergenerational relations was one of the most debated in modern science. The key question is how modern social institutions (family, educational system) ensure the socialisation of the child in a new social situation of development, the transfer of cultural experience in the modern digital world. The urgency of the problem is heightened by the fact that in ethnically homogeneous regions of the Russian Federation, the strategies to transfer traditional values and cultural practices of a collectivist orientation to the younger generation are being maintained, contrary to the “model of desired future” with the successful autonomous behaviour of a sovereign person proposed by the new reality.Aim. The current research aims to explore the socio-psychological patterns of the value transmission in modern families from ethnically homogeneous regions. The study involved representatives of the autochthonous peoples of the Kama region (Udmurts, Komi-Permyaks, Tatars, Bashkirs, Russians) of the older generation – mothers (N = 173, average age 41.4), the younger generation – adolescents (N = 218; average age 14.5, 52.8% females).Methodology and research methods. The theoretical and methodological framework of the research is based on the theory of cultural value orientations, which determine the ways to solve basic problems in regulating human activity (S. Schwartz); the concept of ecological systems explaining the processes of value transmission in the interaction of a child with the outside world (U. Bronfenbrenner). To test the theoretical model, the Structural Equation Modelling method was used. To measure cultural values, a questionnaire for diagnosing cultural values constructed by S. Schwartz in the adaptation of V. N. Karandashev was used; to measure mother-to-child relations, the authors used the questionnaire “Child-Parental Relations of Adolescents” by O. A. Karabanova and P. V. Troyanovskaya; the features of intergenerational interaction in the family (mother-to-child) was studied using the questionnaire “Parent’s Interaction with a Child” by I. M. Markovskaya in two versions – for adolescents and mothers.Results. On the territory of the Russian Federation, stable patterns of value transmission based on traditional collectivist orientations, are preserved. Benevolence (kindness) holds its priority in the hierarchy of values and becomes a significant predictor of intergenerational interaction. At the same time, adolescents are transmitted with active patterns of behaviour to expand their opportunities to enter a world of fierce competition with growing uncertainty and high risks. The identified “clashes” in intergenerational interaction are explained by age patterns in the relationship between parents and adolescent children.Scientific novelty. The obtained results indicate a peculiar integration of collectivist values-goals and individualistic values-means among representatives of the autochthonous peoples of Russia. Models of the intergenerational transmission of values of mothers and adolescents have been constructed and explained revealing the patterns of the transfer of cultural experience in multicultural regions of the Russian Federation.Theoretical significance of the obtained results lies in the possibility of expanding the existing knowledge about the features of the digital generation socialisation in the context of traditional inculturation, about the transformation of the social situation of the development of a growing person in the focus of a new reality and the possibility of interaction between generations of “different worlds”.Practical significance of the acquired knowledge is revealed in the possibility of using it for constructing modern concepts of education and development of psychological and pedagogical technologies for socialising a growing person in the context of epoch-making trends.

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Preschool age is the most favorable period for mastering languages due to a number of psychological factors. This is the age of potential children's opportunities, the period of intensive development of language abilities. Therefore, an indispensable pedagogical condition for the development of early bilingualism is the creation of a favorable educational environment for children. The aim of the study is to study the development of cognitive regulation in connection with the communicative competence of balanced bilinguals (Tatar / Russian) and monolinguals (Russian), whose socialization is carried out in different developing subject-spatial environments. The research methodology is based on sociocultural concepts of “environmental” influences on the mental development (Vygotsky, 1999; Bronfenbrenner, 1999). The empirical study involved 60 children aged 5 to 7 years, among them 30 balanced bilinguals socializing in a bilingual (Tatar/Russian) environment, and 30 monolinguals in a Russian-speaking linguistic environment. To diagnose the development of children’s cognitive regulation, children’s subtests of the NEPSY-II neuropsychological battery were used: “Repetition of sentences”, “Memory for construction”, “Inhibition”, “Sorting cards according to a changeable attribute”; communicative competence in communication - the methods of “Pictures” by E.O. Smirnova and E.A. Kalyagina, “Peculiarities of interpersonal relations for children” by G.R. Khuzeeva; level of general intelligence - a children’s version of the Raven Test methodology. Statistical processing of the obtained data was carried out using the non-parametric U-Mann-Whitney test, Spearman correlation analysis. Conclusions and recommendations. It has been established that balanced bilinguals in older preschool age, compared with monolinguals, have advantages in cognitive regulation, in particular, in updating non-verbal information in the linguistic context of the target language (visual working memory), blocking and suppressing irrelevant verbal and non-verbal information (inhibitory control). Bilingual preschoolers are more active in communication, but less prone to leadership and dominance in a peer group, while monolingual children readily take on a leading role in a group with a desire for a high social position in a peer group. Differences in the convergence of indicators in groups of preschoolers were revealed, in particular, in the group of monolingual children, indicators of cognitive regulation are significantly associated with indicators of communicative competence, while in the group of balanced bilinguals they are with indicators of general intelligence as the ability to use mental operations in solving cognitive problems. We assume that the content of the educational program for the older group of monolinguals in the preschool educational institution is focused primarily on social and communicative development, while for bilinguals it is focused on cognitive and speech development.

The article serves as an introduction to the issues discussed in tthe special issue. The current state of psycho-semantics as an interdisciplinary research approach to the exploration of consciousness and personality which allows to study various forms of the existence of meanings, a picture of the world, subjective meanings, im-plicit and explicit intentions, attitudes, representations is analyzed. The history of its development associated with implementing into scientific practices the semantic differential method constructed in the middle of the last century by the American psychologist C. Osgood and its modifications proposed by Russian researchers are examined. A variety of options for the implementation of research by modern Russian scholars within the framework of the psychosemantic approach are described.