Implicit associative component of mental states representations

The research aimed the studying of associative features of mental states representations, the explicit and implicit components in the relationship between a situation and a mental state in educational activity of students. As the research method the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was used. In some experiments the associative connections of educational activity situations (lectures and exams) with mental states were investigated (interest, indifference, nervousness, calmness, inspiration, and dullness). The hypothesis was to check whether there are tasks to be carried out with various paces, i.e. whether the implicit association effect can be different in connections of situations and mental states. We supposed that in each test task the stimuli should be associated with various paces that depend on association ease or association difficulty. If the concepts which are easier associated among themselves are supported for association, a test task should be performed quicker and less mistakes should be made in comparison with the tasks containing the concepts which are difficultly associated among themselves. The research hypothesis was based on a prerequisite that the relations in the context "situation - mental state", are kept in memory in the form of association between an image of one object (in this case situations) and image of another object (a mental state). Students from 17 to 25 years-old (23 male persons and 41 female) participated in the research. The experiments showed that the situation of exam is implicitly connected with such mental states as nervousness, interest, and inspiration. A lecture is implicitly connected with calmness. In general, exams are characterized by more expressed implicit association connections with mental states, than lectures (the average association time is 16.14 sec). The obtained data show bigger association proximity of such concepts as an exam and inspiration, than an exam and dullness. The difference of reaction time in connections "exam - calmness" and "exam - nervousness" (0.43 sec.), "lecture - nervousness" and "lecture - calmness" (0.27 sec.), "exam - indifference" and "exam - nervousness" (0.21 sec.), "lecture - dullness" and "lecture - inspiration" (0.13 sec.) is significant (at p = 0,004). We have found distinctions in associative connections of lecture and exam situations with states of a different sign and level of mental activity. Mental states characterized by high level of mental activity (interest and nervousness) have the most expressed associative connections with situations. In general the test people have made many mistakes. The average rate of the mistakes made during the experiment makes 8.86 per cent. The high rate of mistakes indirectly testifies to relative complexity of implicit association for experiment's participants.

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