Psychophysiological Mechanisms of Choice in High School Students and University Students Specializing in Humanities

Abstract

Elucidation of behavioral reactions of high school and university students in stochastic and deterministic environments is an important problem. Rapidly changeable and unstable social and information environment makes it urgent to raise the problem of decision-making in all areas of human activity [18]. According to the theory of functional systems suggested by P. K. Anokhin, a behavioral act is considered as an aggregate of many physiological processes selected at the stage of decision-making [1-3]. According to V. B. Shvyrkov [25], a behavioral act should be regarded as a component of a functional system, because interaction of external information with internal processes is mediated by the entire operating complex of the functional system. Although it is beyond doubt that the closed circuit of a functional system is cyclic, principles of central mechanisms are a subject of discussion [23]. In the physiological sense the process of decisionmaking is based on selection of certain executive mechanisms and physiological integration of results of afferent synthesis [2]. A decrease in the degree of freedom of the central nervous system neurons and a decrease in their possible involvement in the functional aggregates are neurophysiological characteristics of the stage of decision-making. Excessive degrees of freedom are easily sorted out by the frontal lobes of the brain. A. R. Luriya considered the frontal lobes of the brain as the main nervous substrate of decision-making in goaloriented spontaneous activity [13]. Psychophysiological aspects of this problem are based on mechanisms of decision-making at different levels of sensorimotor and mental activities [7]. According to the physiological concept suggested by Anokhin, psychophysiological mechanisms of choice can be studied from individual manifestation of different forms of behavioral activity under different experimental settings [18]. Studies of behavior under uncertain conditions are of particular interest [17, 22]. Environmental uncertainty implies the absence of objective and subjective determinancy [10]. According to [5, 21], the main behavioral reaction under uncertain conditions is individual prognosis of the probability of future events. According to A. S. Batuev [4], the process of decision-making includes formation of a dynamic constellation of spatially separated brain structures involved in a behavioral act. Adaptive behavior in a variable environment is based on probabilistic prognosis implemented in associative brain systems. For example, thalamofrontal structures are involved in probabilistic prognosis and goal-oriented behavior. According to the contemporary viewpoint, the rates of decision-making and central information processing are determined by nervous system mobility [24]. Decision-making as an object of psychophysiological research can be studied experimentally, providing thereby the opportunity for testing functional systems of different levels of hierarchy and functional systems involved in various psychophysiological processes. There are objective and subjective factors of learning activity. The psychophysiological state of high school and university students depends on these factors [9, 20], Analytical capacity is an important component of successful learning [8, 9]. It should be noted that agerelated psychophysiological mechanisms of making choice remain virtually obscure [9]. The goal of this work was to elucidate age-related dynamics of certain psychophysiological mechanisms of choice in high school students and university students specializing in humanities.