EFFECTS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SET ON SOME HUMA N COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS

A psychological set was formed in 30 healthy adult subjects by means o f successive exposition on the screen (with the intervals in 3-7 sec) of 30 single psendow words written in the Latin letters. This series o f stimuli was immediately followed by similar presentation of 36 singl e Russian words which consisted of the letters written in the same way as some characters of the Latin alphabet. At the beginning of the sec ond train of stimuli all the subjects began to read the well-known Rus sian words as senseless. In 11 subjects this effect disappeared after 1-2 Russian word presentations and in 19 subjects only after 6-36 pres entations. Analysis of the reaction time to the presentation of the vi sual probe stimulus suggests that the formation of preparatory set imp roves selective attention to the stimuli acting in a given situation a nd thus consolidates the cognitive processes.