N.R. Usaeva, postgraduate student
V.V. Apokin, associate professor, Ph.D.
B.P. Yakovlev, Professor, Dr.Psych.
Surgut State University, Surgut

Key words: emotional stability, mental load, correctional program, student-athletes, hearing impairment, university education.

Introduction. Education is the constitutional right of every person, and when entering a university, people with disabilities immediately get into an active learning environment with uniform requirements for all students and, surely, are subject to great mental load, which may exceed their optimum and even maximum abilities and reserves [5, 6].

This affects our students, too, who, though being hearing impaired, are still highly skilled athletes. Sport activities helped this contingent of people self-actualize in many ways, adopt own life philosophy, become more self-confident. While overcoming physical loads, student-athletes have already tempered their mentality to some extent [2, 3]. However, mental load they have during their university studies has its peculiarities [4]. Tension related to training load, anxiety over future professional career and own place in society, problems in the sphere of interpersonal relationships, - all that makes university students vulnerable and may result in the development of emotional instability.

Therefore, the necessity to study and develop emotional stability, which is an integrative personality trait reflecting a person's inclination to maintain emotional well-being and including low anxiety and neuroticism, self-confidence [1], is conditioned by the fact that during their studies students with disabilities run into serious difficulties with acquisition of information in an unusual way, organization of their learning activity and adaptation to new environments, such students are in need of psychological support when solving personality and job-related problems [7]. As a result, athletes get more anxious, irritable, emotionally unstable, which, in turn, influences the results of their training and sports activities. That is why development of emotional stability to mental load during their studies will also positively affect their sports activity.

The problematicity of the study is stipulated by the pressing contradiction between the objective of formation in universities of independent, highly skilled professionals, resistant to difficult conditions of work, and low emotional stability of student-athletes with hearing impairments to mental stress during their university studies.

The purpose of the research was to develop emotional stability to mental load in student-athletes with hearing impairments during their university studies.

Materials and methods. The experiment involved highly skilled student-athletes with hearing impairments, whose sport qualifications ranged from Masters of Sports of Russia to Honored Masters of Sports. The correctional program was realized during training sessions and training camps. For these student-athletes their training activity is habitual, so it was reasonable to hold correctional-developmental activities in the environments they know.

The control group was made of the students from the group of "Physical education for individuals with health deviations". The students from the control and experimental groups studied in the same group, so their learning environments did not differ.

The following psychodiagnostic methodologies were used: "Emotional stability/instability (neuroticism) scale" by H. Eysenck, Taylor’s Student's manifest anxiety scale (modification of E.P. Il'in), Yu.Ya. Kiselev’s "Thermometer scale".

The conducted ascertaining experiment revealed the peculiarities of manifestation of emotional stability to mental load in learning activity. It was determined that a considerable number of student-athletes had high level of estimation of mental load, which was 12.7±2.50 on the average. During the complex educational experiment, what mobilization of volition actions, instability of which disorganizes activity, was typical for the representatives of this group. As for emotions, there were observed irritability, proneness to conflict, strong emotional pain regarding studies, exposure to fatigue and exhaustion. The vast majority of student-athletes were emotionally unstable, and the average level of "neuroticism" equaled 16.0±2.97 points. The detected low emotional stability was equal to 15.5±1.97 points.

The conducted correlation analysis allowed highlighting the negative relation between emotional stability and mental load (p<0.05).

We assumed that by correcting emotional instability we could level up students' emotional well-being. This, in turn, will help estimate the mental load intensity as adequate, which will contribute to the enhancement of emotional-volitional self-regulation. Therefore, it became necessary to establish and implement a correctional program of development of emotional stability to mental load in student-athletes with hearing impairments, the focal areas of which are:

psychognostic, which comprised a research component focused on determination of the dynamics of changes in students' emotional stability to mental load during their studies. The main kinds and forms of activity in the psychognostic area were observation, psychological testing, questionnaire survey, diagnosing, completion of diagnostic documents;

knowledge-retrieval, which included a motivational component based on the measures on providing students with full-length information on the value of psychoemotional state and mastering of emotion regulation technique during their studies. The main kinds and forms of this trend were lectures, conferences, information stands, printed material;

psychoprophylactic, the aim of which was that students acquired the skills of self-regulation of their emotional state using different means and methods. This trend was based on individual, group, thematic consultations, elaboration of recommendations for students, teachers, tutors.

Practical recommendations for students will help them develop emotional stability, give them efficiency and self-confidence during learning activity and development of the skill of effective communication with people.

Practical recommendations for teachers will help them properly organize their work within the system "teacher-student", obviate difficulties in learning educational material, which, in turn, will level down mental tension of students with disabilities and contribute to an increase of their emotional stability.

Practical recommendations for tutors will help organize training activity, extra-curricular, independent and individual work of students during their university studies;

organizational and technological, which was the key one in our program, as its content implied the development and implementation of the correctional program, conducting correctional-educational classes, which consisted in training students how to regulate their emotional states. The most well-grounded method of correction of students' emotional instability was socio-psychological training, which included self-consciousness as self-comprehension (cognitive aspect), self-attitude (emotional aspect) and self-regulation (behavioral aspect).

The cycle of classes was based on the exercises for development of emotional self-regulation:

– mimic muscle relaxation exercises;

– breathing exercises;

– attention focusing exercises;

– exercises to use imagination and visualization techniques.

Each class included 4 stages:

– creation of a single psychological environment;

– specific problem solving, acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities, achievement of educational goals;

– respiratory gymnastics which aims at both toning up and soothing, in dependence to physical state at the specific moment or a set objective or goal of a specific class;

– creation of self-reflection situation.

Results and discussion. The comparative analysis conducted right after the experiment revealed a higher percentage of emotionally unstable students in the experimental group and a higher percentage of emotionally stable students in the control group. At the same time, the mean values of "neuroticism", registered after the experiment in the control and experimental groups, correspond to the lowest level of the average emotional stability. "Neuroticism" changed from 13.7±4.11 to 13.2±3.61 points (p>0.05) and from 16.0±2.97 to 13.8±2.79 points (p<0.05) in the control and experimental groups respectively.

The anxiety level changed insignificantly in the control group (p>0.05), while in the experimental one students' anxiety reduced from 15.5±1.97 to 14.0±0.89 points (p<0.05). Manifestations of anxiety, fear and lack of self-confidence decreased significantly to the total exclusion of abnormal irritability. During the experiment, the change in the efficiency of self-regulation was insignificant in the control group (p>0.05), while in the experimental group the efficiency of students' self-regulation increased from 8.0±2.76 to 9.7±3.83 points (p<0.05).

It was found that in the control group the values of mental load changed insignificantly (p>0.05), and the reduction of the values of mental load from 12.7±2.50 to 10.8±1.13 points was statistically significant (p<0.05).

Conclusions. The application of the correctional program of development of emotional stability to mental load in student-athletes with hearing impairments during their university studies promoted the significant enhancement of their emotional stability, reduction of anxiety, increase of efficiency of self-regulation and reduction of the values of mental load (p <0,05). The detected features of emotional stability as a component of professional development of students with disabilities should be taken into account by teachers and psychologists when working with this contingent of students.

References

1. Il'in, E.P. Emotions and will / E.P. Il'in. – St. Petersburg: Piter, 2001. – 749 P. (In Russian)
2. Usaeva, N.R. Psychoremobilizing of athletes' states under intense competitive activity / N.R. Usaeva, B.P. Yakovlev / Proceedings of the International theoretical and practical conference for memory of P. Roudik. Мoscow: RSUPhCSYT. – 2014. – P. 363–365. (In Russian)
3. Yakovlev, B.P. Interrelation of motivation and emotions in physical culture and sports activity / B.P. Yakovlev, G.D. Babushkin, E.G. Babushkin, N.R. Usaeva // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kul'tury. – 2014. – № 2. – P. 87–89. (In Russian)
4. Yakovlev, B.P. Mental load in terms of organization of adaptive self-training of students with disabilities during studies / B.P. Yakovlev, N.R. Usaeva // Adaptivnaya fizicheskaya kul'tura. – 2014. – № 2. – P. 35–38. (In Russian)
5. Yakovlev, B.P. Mental load: health and abilities of pupils / B.P. Yakovlev, N.R. Usaeva // Uspekhi sovremennogo estestvoznaniya. – 2014. – № 1. – P. 27–32. (In Russian)
6. Yakovlev, B.P. Mental load and personal safety of gifted children / B.P. Yakovlev, V.V. Vasil'ev, N.R. Usaeva // Healthy Lifestyle and Health Protection: Proceedings of the All-Rus. theoretical-practical conference. - Surgut: PPD of SurSPU. – 2014. – P. 45–46. (In Russian)
7. Yakovlev, B.P. Managing mental loads of gifted children on the basis of system synergetic approach / B.P. Yakovlev, N.R. Usaeva // Sovremennye problemy nauki i obrazovaniya. – 2014. – № 1. (In Russian)

Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru