Cyberpsychology: evolution of the notion and current state

Abstract

The article is aimed to analyze of a relatively new area of psychology – cyberpsychology. It was analyzed a number of cyberpsychology notions and researches which highlights such psychological aspects of people’s functioning in the virtual environment as motivational, cognitive, age-related, pedagogical, social, clinical, gender, psychophysiological and other ones. There are several advantages of Internet-learning in compare with traditional one – decrease of pedagogical authoritarianism, increase of learners independence, their higher responsibility for their learning, expanding the boundaries of learning, time economy etc. At the same time the Internet is characterized by specifics, which may make potential threats to the successful learning in it. These include addictions forming, identity violations, problems with the information defense, deterioration of communication quality, the development of deviations and specific psychopathology. Interaction with psychologists is desired during the development of distance learning courses to improve their efficiency and for its implementation at the time of appearing above mentioned problems.