Psychological modeling

Modeling in psychology - the application of the method of modeling in psychological research. Develops in two directions;

sign or technical imitation of mechanisms, processes and results of mental activity - mental modeling;
the organization of a particular type of human activity by artificially constructing the environment of this activity is the modeling of situations linking the studied mental processes; The latter is called psychological modeling.
Modeling the psyche is a method of studying the mental state, properties and processes, which consists in building models of mental phenomena and studying the functioning of these models using the results obtained as data on the patterns of functioning of the psyche. By completeness of the reflection of the object in the model, the following classes and subclasses of psyche models can be distinguished: sign (figurative, verbal, mathematical), program (rigidly algorithmic, heuristic, block diagram), real (bionic). Such a sequence of models reflects a gradual transition from the described imitation of the results and functions of mental activity to the real imitation of its structure and mechanisms.

Modeling the psyche is closely connected with the problem of artificial intelligence and the construction of complex control information and computer machines and systems. Work on the modeling of the psyche is carried out not only in psychology, but also in areas related to psychology - bionics, cybernetics, automation, computing, computer science. The first successes in the modeling of the psyche were achieved in the middle of the 20th century. based on digital and analog computing.

The current level of knowledge about mental activity allows a wide development of research only at the first steps of approaching a model to an object, therefore sign-based (in particular, mathematical) and program (in particular, heuristic) models are most developed at present. With their help, we managed to imitate some aspects of such processes and properties of the psyche, such as perception, memorization, learning, logical thinking, etc. The first attempts are made to construct real — hypothetical and bionic — models of mental activity (for example, the perceptron of F. Rosenblatt and others).