Mental Regulation of Students’ Mental States in Everyday and Stressful Learning Situations

Abstract

Introduction. In modern conditions of life, the problem of regulation of mental states and behavior of the personality is of particular relevance. Today Individual style of behavior self-regulation, or self-regulation of functional states consider existing approaches and concepts as a specific type of personality activity. The central place is occupied by the structures of consciousness: semantic, reflective, representative, etc. in the concept of mental states’ regulation developed by the authors. The functional organization of the structures of consciousness is formed in connection with the specifics of complexes consisting of mental structures, mental states and operational means of regulation. Methods. 132 students took part in the study (average age – 19 years, second-year students of the Institute of Psychology and Education of the Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University). We studied the intensity of manifestations of mental states and the effectiveness of their self-regulation on the mental structures in everyday (at lectures) and in stressful (at exams) situations of learning activity. Separately, we studied the severity of each component of the mental structure: semantic structures, reflection, self-attitude in the regulatory process. We studied mental structures using standardized methods and specially developed author's questionnaires. Results. The situational conditionality of the effectiveness of students’ mental states regulation is revealed. In an everyday situation, the key elements of the functional regulatory structure are the reflection of states, the emotional richness of life and the acceptance of people around. In a stressful situation, students' confidence in their abilities, satisfaction with self-realization and a low level of reflection on experience come to the fore. Discussion. The results confirm the concept of mental states’ regulation, denoting the significant role of the consciousness structures (reflective, semantic, self-system) in the regulation of mental states of students. The results are also consistent with the studies of other authors who deal with this problem.

Keywords

• everyday situation
• stressful situation
• mental state
• mental regulation
• regulation efficiency
• reflection
• self-system
• semantic structures