Purpose: During the last decade, a firm's ability to innovate has gained substantial attention in the literature devoted to innovation and strategic management. This study aims at discussing on what is the relationship of a firm's commitment to learn and its open-mindedness with its activity in introducing organizational innovations. The data collection was carried out in Russia. In order to make the research more specific, the organizational innovation is broken down into two subtypes, namely innovation in management practices and innovation in workplace organization.Design/methodology/approach: The study is grounded on the data obtained by the surveying of 123 Russian top managers working in manufacturing firms. The structural equation modeling was approached in order to investigate the impact of a firm's commitment to learn and open-mindedness on its organizational innovation.Findings: The results indicate that the commitment to learn and the open-mindedness have considerable impact on organizational innovation activity in a firm. The findings also provide evidence that both the investigated subtypes of organizational innovation are positively influenced by commitment to learn and open-mindedness, though the degree of that influence differs.Originality/value: The literature traditionally focuses mostly on the technological type of innovation leaving the organizational innovation covered by scarce research. In this respect the study contributes to the theory of organizational innovation by elaborating its relations with organizational learning dimensions. Apart from the investigation on the research question at a general level, the study explores the specific context related to the manifestation of phenomenon in a transition economy of Russia.

Yanykin A. A., Nasledov A. D. (2017). Internalized homophobia in Russia. Psychology in Russia: State of the Art, 10(2), 103-116.. Established in 2008, the Russian Psychological Society's Journal «Psychology in Russia: State of the Art» publishes original articles.

Background: Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is a significant socio-biological problem due to its wide prevalence and negative outcomes. In the current study, we aimed to develop an autism scale for early and accurate differentiation of 3- to 4-year-olds at risk for ASD since there is no systematic monitoring of young children in Russia yet. Methods: The total sample (N = 324) included 116 children with ASD, 131 children without ASD (healthy controls), and 77 children with developmental delay (DD). An online survey of specialists working with children was conducted based on a specially designed autism questionnaire consisting of 85 multiple-choice tasks distributed across 12 domains. Initially, each child was assessed by 434 items using a dichotomous scale (0 = no, 1 = yes). Factor and discriminant analyses were performed to identify a compact set of subscales that most accurately and with sufficient reliability predicted whether a child belongs to the ASD group. Results: As a result, four subscales were obtained: Sensorics, Emotions, Hyperactivity, and Communication. The high discriminability of the subscales in distinguishing the ASD group from the non-ASD group was revealed (accuracy 85.5–87.0%). Overall, the obtained subscales meet psychometric requirements and allow for creating an online screening system for wide application.

Background. In Turkey, university education is highly valued, and is considered a key to success and happiness in life. The gatekeeper for a university education is a central entrance exam. The entire process is lengthy, hard, and anxiety-provoking. Objective. Our study aimed to investigate the factors associated with test anxiety related to the university entrance exam. The effects of the perceived attitudes of the student's mother and father on his or her test anxiety are exam-fined separately, and beyond the effect of other risk factors. Design. The participants were 102 high school students and recent graduate between the ages of 14 and 19. Data was collected just before a test anxiety workshop, which was designed as part of an open day activity in a private, non-profit university. The workshop featured an interactive presentation about general anxiety, test anxiety, and coping strategies, which was followed by a progressive relaxation exercise. Results. It was found that having a lower GPA score, being female, and having an increased level of neuroticism, as well as an increased level of perceived paternal acceptance and paternal control, were associated with higher levels of test anxiety. Conclusion. The university entrance exam preparation period in Turkey is quite stressful for the students and creates an economic strain for their families. Considering that fathers are usually the financial authority figure within the households, paternal attitudes might predominantly affect the test anxiety level experienced by the student. In addition to paternal control, paternal acceptance might also be a source of stress since it, like control, includes "expectations" for the student's success.

Background. Sound symbolism (SS) refers to the direct association between the sound and the meaning of a word. The results of cross-linguistic research prove that SS is universal for different languages and cultures. Thirty percent of all natural languages consist of SS words. But despite the large number of psychosemantic studies which have been conducted, the cognitive mechanisms of the perception of SS words still remain unclear. Objective. The aim of this study was to determine how Russian-speaking subjects perceive visually presented English and Russian words, as measured by the Lexical decision method. Design. The study sample consisted of 148 subjects of ages ranging from 13 to 78. The study was conducted in two stages. During the first stage, the perception of visually-presented English SS words by Russian learners of English, with three different levels of language proficiency was studied. During the second stage, the perception of visually-presented Russian SS words by Russian native speakers from three different age groups was studied. The stimuli material was selected according to the following criteria 1) ach word was monosyllabic; 2) Each SS word corresponded to a single arbitrary (non-SS) word of the same pronunciation type; and 3) Each word corresponded to a non-word, formed from it by replacing letters according to the phonotactic rules of English and Russian. At each stage of the study, each subject was given 80 stimuli consisting of 20 SS words, 20 non-SS words, and 40 non-words. An analysis of contingency tables (Chi-square test), comparison of averages (Student's t-test), and analyses of variances (ANOVA) were applied to the data. Results. The visually-presented SS words were identified more slowly and with more errors than the non-SS words, regardless of the language (Russian or English), the subjects' age, and their English language proficiency. Conclusions. The observed delay effect in the cognitive processing of visually-presented SS words is due to the cognitive complexity of the task, which leads to the activation of cross-modal interaction system, besides, interfering systems of information processing are assumed to exist.