SUMMARY
Introduction. The article highlights psycholinguistic features of students’ acquisition of visual-semantic image of a hieroglyph in studying Japanese. The choice of the image category is justified by its ability to reflect in individual’s consciousness a complete picture of the object of cognition, which corresponds with the specific character of the hieroglyphic script. The visual-semantic image of a hieroglyphic sign has been defined as a complicated cognitive complex (mental image), which is an integral product of visual sensory-perceptual reception of all graphic elements of the hieroglyph formal structure, a coherent vision of it and conceptual representation, embodied in the meaning.Goal. The purpose of the article is to present results of the study of psycholinguistic features of students’ acquisition of visual-semantic images of hieroglyphs. The following techniques have been chosen as the main psychodiagnostic tools: «Pictograms» by ?. Luria, «Hidden Figures» by K Gottschaldt, «Matching Familiar Figures» by J. Kagan, «Free Sorting of Objects» by R. Gardner in modification by V. Kolg.Results. Results of theoretical explorations on the psychological features of the problem of a personality’s acquisition of foreign languages, particularly, hieroglyphic, have been presented. It has been shown that interpretive capabilities of hieroglyphic signs are fundamentally different from the usual European method of linguistic codification of reality and that optimization ways of Oriental languages acquisition should be based on the differences between phonemic and hieroglyphic writing. Psycholinguistic peculiarities of students’ acquisition of the visual-semantic image of a hieroglyph have been revealed – character and structure of students’ visual and meaning images of hieroglyphic meanings have a significantly expressed individuality. The study of individual cognitive learning styles the educational information by students has shown that main cognitive skills and abilities are one of the factors of this success in combination with others; quality of the hieroglyphics acquisition improves with a good ability in systematization, generalization, unification of the unit into broad classes, as well as in the tendency to reasonableness.