Despite the growing interest in societal impact in the business and society literature, there remains a notable gap in research on the impact of health interventions on physical and mental health and social welfare. To address this gap, we shift the unit of analysis to the intervention, akin to the level of analysis used in health research. Drawing on a curated subset of health interventions in the workplace from the public health literature, we argue that management scholars can adopt the (...) methods used by public health scholars to design and assess health interventions. By tapping into the rich insights gained from these studies, management scholars can propose evidence-based interventions and policies that can enhance health outcomes, improve productivity, and cultivate a healthier workplace atmosphere. Collaborating with public health researchers, business and society scholars can help create a new field of research on corporate health policy. (shrink)

The ability to be creative is often considered a unique characteristic of conscious beings and many efforts have been directed at demonstrating a relationship between creativity and the personality construct of psychoticism. The present study sought to investigate this link explicitly by focusing on discrete facets of creative cognition, namely the originality/novelty dimension and the practicality/usefulness dimension. Based on Eysenck’s conceptualisation of psychoticism as being characterised by an overinclusive cognitive style, it was expected that higher levels of psychoticism would accompany (...) a greater degree of conceptual expansion and elevated levels of originality in creative imagery, but would be unrelated to the practicality/usefulness of an idea. These hypotheses were confirmed in 80 healthy participants who were contrasted based on their EPQ psychoticism scale scores. Our findings suggest that the link between psychoticism and creativity is based on associative thinking and broader but weak top-down activation patterns rather than on goal-related thinking. (shrink)

Gervain et al. discuss both behavioral and neurophysiological AGL studies that investigate rule and structure learning processes in infants. The paper provides an overview of all the major AGL paradigms used to date to investigate infant learning abilities at the level of morpho‐phonology and syntax from a very early age onwards. Gervain et al. also discuss the implications of the results for a general theory of natural language acquisition.

We welcome Ballantyne & Schaefer’s discussion of the issues concerning consent and use of health data for research. In response to their acknowledgement of the need for public debate and discussion, we provide evidence from our own public consultation on this topic.

Gervain et al. discuss both behavioral and neurophysiological AGL studies that investigate rule and structure learning processes in infants. The paper provides an overview of all the major AGL paradigms used to date to investigate infant learning abilities at the level of morpho‐phonology and syntax from a very early age onwards. Gervain et al. also discuss the implications of the results for a general theory of natural language acquisition.

Laboratori didattici-Ipotesi di percorso. Sono raccolte le proposte di fruibilità didattica di alcuni tra gli aspetti più rilevanti del complesso problema delle Origini nelle Scienze Contemporanee, sviluppate dai Docenti, Studenti e Specializzandi di diverse scuole della Regione Toscana, che hanno partecipato ai Laboratori Didattici della Fondazione Stensen di Firenze, nel contesto delle celebrazioni dell’Anno Internazionale dell’Astronomia del 2009, a memoria dei 400 anni dall’utilizzazione astronomica da parte di Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) del cannocchiale.

The proposed framework by Lynch et al. (2021) for promoting ethical forms of payment in Human Infection Controlled Studies (HICS) in general and SARS-Cov-2 HICS in particular is an important contri...

Before COVID-19, dementia singing groups and choirs flourished, providing activity, cognitive stimulation, and social support for thousands of people with dementia in the UK. Interactive music provides one of the most effective psychosocial interventions for people with dementia; it can allay agitation and promote wellbeing. Since COVID-19 has halted the delivery of in-person musical activities, it is important for the welfare of people with dementia and their carers to investigate what alternatives to live music making exist, how these alternatives are (...) delivered and how their accessibility can be expanded. This community case study examines recent practice in online music-making in response to COVID-19 restrictions for people with dementia and their supporters, focusing on a UK context. It documents current opportunities for digital music making, and assesses the barriers and facilitators to their delivery and accessibility. Online searches of video streaming sites and social media documented what music activities were available. Expert practitioners and providers collaborated on this study and supplied input about the sessions they had been delivering, the technological challenges and solutions they had found, and the responses of the participants. Recommendations for best practice were developed and refined in consultation with these collaborators. Over 50 examples of online music activities were identified. In addition to the challenges of digital inclusion and accessibility for some older people, delivering live music online has unique challenges due to audio latency and sound quality. It is necessary to adapt the session to the technology's limitations rather than expect to overcome these challenges. The recommendations highlight the importance of accessibility, digital safety and wellbeing of participants. They also suggest ways to optimize the quality of their musical experience. The pandemic has prompted innovative approaches to deliver activities and interventions in a digital format, and people with dementia and their carers have adapted rapidly. While online music is meeting a clear current need for social connection and cognitive stimulation, it also offers some advantages which remain relevant after COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed. The recommendations of this study are intended to be useful to musicians, dementia care practitioners, and researchers during the pandemic and beyond. (shrink)

Risk taking is a component of the decision-making process in situations that involve uncertainty and in which the probability of each outcome – rewards and/or negative consequences – is already known. The influence of cognitive and emotional processes in decision making may affect how risky situations are addressed. First, inaccurate assessments of situations may constitute a perceptual bias in decision making, which might influence RT. Second, there seems to be consensus that a proneness bias exists, known as risk proneness, which (...) can be defined as the propensity to be attracted to potentially risky activities. In the present study, we take the approach that risk perception and risk proneness affect RT behaviours. The study hypothesises that locus of control, emotion regulation, and executive control act as perceptual biases in RT, and that personality, sensation seeking, and impulsivity traits act as proneness biases in RT. The results suggest that locus of control, emotion regulation and executive control influence certain domains of RT, while personality influences in all domains except the recreational, and sensation seeking and impulsivity are involved in all domains of RT. The results of the study constitute a foundation upon which to build in this research area and can contribute to the increased understanding of human behaviour in risky situations. (shrink)

Drawing from field theory, Gestalt therapy conceives psychological suffering and psychotherapy as two intentional field phenomena, where unprocessed and chaotic experiences seek the opportunity to emerge and be assimilated through the contact between the patient and the therapist (i.e., the intentionality of contacting). This therapeutic approach is based on the therapist’s aesthetic experience of his/her embodied presence in the flow of the healing process because (1) the perception of beauty can provide the therapist with feedback on the assimilation of unprocessed (...) experiences; (2) the therapist’s attentional focus on intrinsic aesthetic diagnostic criteria can facilitate the modification of rigid psychopathological fields by supporting the openness to novel experiences. The aim of the present manuscript is to review recent evidence from psychophysiology, neuroaesthetic research, and neurocomputational models of cognition, such as the free energy principle (FEP), which support the notion of the therapeutic potential of aesthetic sensibility in Gestalt psychotherapy. Drawing from neuroimaging data, psychophysiology and recent neurocognitive accounts of aesthetic perception, we propose a novel interpretation of the sense of beauty as a self-generated reward motivating us to assimilate an ever-greater spectrum of sensory and affective states in our predictive representation of ourselves and the world and supporting the intentionality of contact. Expecting beauty, in the psychotherapeutic encounter, can help therapists tolerate uncertainty avoiding impulsive behaviours and to stay tuned to the process of change. (shrink)

There is an increasing amount of empirical work investigating the sense of agency, i.e. the registration that we are the initiators of our own actions. Many studies try to relate the sense of agency to an internal feed-forward mechanism, called the ‘‘comparator model’’. In this paper, we draw a sharp distinction between a non-conceptual level of feeling of agency and a conceptual level of judgement of agency. By analyzing recent empirical studies, we show that the comparator model is not able (...) to explain either. Rather, we argue for a two-step account: a multifactorial weighting process of different agency indicators accounts for the feeling of agency, which is, in a second step, further processed by conceptual modules to form an attribution judgement. This new framework is then applied to disruptions of agency in schizophrenia, for which the comparator model also fails. Two further extensions are discussed: We show that the comparator model can neither be extended to account for the sense of ownership (which also has to be differentiated into a feeling and a judgement of ownership) nor for the sense of agency for thoughts. Our framework, however, is able to provide a unified account for the sense of agency for both actions and thoughts. (shrink)

This article is based on an online ethnographic study of Dutch women who use YouTube as a medium to document their contested illness experiences. During 13 months of observations between 2017 and 2019, we followed a sample of 16 YouTubers, and conducted an in-depth analysis of 30 YouTube videos and of 7 interviews. By adopting a ‘praxiographic’ approach to social media, and by utilising insights from phenomenological theory, this study teases out how bodies are ‘done’ in (the making of) these (...) YouTube videos. We describe three types of bodies: (1) inert bodies, (2) experienced bodies, and (3) authentic bodies. Ultimately, this study shows how vlogging about contested illness is a practice in which bodies are continually (re)configured, and through which the ‘invisibility’ of a sufferer’s condition can obtain social visibility. (shrink)

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, neurophilosophy appears as a branch of neurosciences. The aim of this article is to review critically some of the epistemological and anthropological debates which neurophilosophy is putting on question again. In this sense the philosophical research conducted by the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace will be used as the main thread of the analysis. To accomplish this critical review, the article has been organized into two parts: the first is of epistemological nature, (...) and the second has an anthropological perspective. This analysis will lead us to question the significance of the contributions of neurophilosophy to a better understanding of the human being. (shrink)

In written and spoken communications, metaphors are often used as an aid to help convey abstract or less tangible concepts. However, the benefits of using visual metaphors in visualization have so far been inconclusive. In this work, we report an empirical study to evaluate hypotheses that visual metaphors may aid memorization, visual search and concept comprehension. One major departure from previous metaphor-related experiments in the literature is that we make use of a dual-task methodology in our experiment. This design offers (...) an abstraction of typical situations where viewers do not have their full attention focused on visualization (e.g., in meetings and classes). The use of the secondary task introduces “divided attention”, and makes the effects of visual metaphors more observable. In addition, it also serves as additional masking in memory-based trials. The results of this study show that visual metaphors can help participants better remember the information depicted in visualization. On the other hand, visual metaphors can have a negative impact on the speed of visual search. The results also show a complex pattern as to the benefits of visual metaphors in helping participants grasp key concepts from visualization. (shrink)

A equipe da Enfermagem é privilegiada, pois, é o cuidador que permanece vinte e quatro horas na assistência direta do paciente, podendo ter uma visão ampliada da pessoa no processo do adoecimento, tendo a oportunidade de incorporar e desenvolver os princípios dos Cuidados Paliativos (CP). Na perspectiva holística da saúde a religião/religiosidade/espiritualidade é uma das possibilidades de cuidado e manejo, porém ainda muito negligenciada pelos profissionais da saúde, seja por desconhecimento ou preconceitos e tabus, mas que se torna essencial no (...) cuidado de pacientes em CP. Por meio deste relato de experiência, objetiva-se ressaltar a importância da religião/religiosidade/espiritualidade, no cuidado e manejo de pacientes em CP, a partir da experiência de uma profissional da enfermagem, sua prática em cuidados e docência, supervisionando alunos com pacientes em contexto dos CP. Anos acompanhando alunos na prática, demonstraram que os profissionais da enfermagem têm dificuldade de identificar o Sofrimento Espiritual (SE) dos pacientes, e quando identificavam, não sabiam o que fazer com esta demanda, delegando a outros profissionais da equipe, que também tinham dificuldades, causando um (des)cuidado na Dimensão Espiritual (DE) do paciente em CP, trazendo-o mais sofrimento e desconforto com sua finitude. Como resultado dessas reflexões, está sendo desenvolvida uma pesquisa de pós-doutorado, destinada a identificar a DE, construção de roteiro de educação permanente. Em síntese, esses profissionais tendo a capacitação para identificar o SE, explorar e cuidar da DE, poderão promover a proteção da saúde mental, tanto do paciente em CP quanto sua, e tornarem-se profissionais mais sensíveis na finitude. (shrink)

Previous studies have highlighted that temporal source memory can be influenced by factors such as the individual’s age and the emotional valence of the event to be remembered. In this study, we investigated how the different points of view (POVs) from which an event is presented could interact with the relationship between age-related differences and emotional valence on temporal source memory. One hundred and forty-one younger adults (aged 18–30) and 90 older adults (aged 65–74) were presented with a series of (...) emotional videos shot from different POVs (first vs. third-person) in three sessions. In the fourth session, participants were asked to indicate in which session (1, 2, or 3) they viewed each video. The results indicated that the first-person POV amplified the effects of the emotional valence on temporal source memory. Only in this experimental condition, older adults “pushed away” negative stimuli by perceiving them as more distant in time, and “kept closer” positive stimuli by perceiving them as more recent. In comparison, younger adults “kept closer” positive stimuli. These findings add to the existing literature on the positivity effect on temporal source memory and highlighted the importance of considering the POV in relation to the emotional valence. (shrink)

En un momento de gran efervescencia feminista, se entremezclan las reclamaciones políticas del movimiento con las peligrosas reapropiaciones que de sus núcleos de lucha hace el neoliberalismo. Las tensiones que se presentan en este contexto son muchas y variadas, algunas evidentes y otras invisibles, pero todas contribuyen a la torsión actual del feminismo. En el presente artículo se abordarán algunas de estas tensiones que nacen en la intersección entre feminismo y neoliberalismo: desde la publicidad como posible herramienta feminista hasta los (...) discursos sobre el emprendimiento y el empleo, pasando por el diseño de políticas públicas, y la mercantilización de los cuerpos femeninos. También se abordarán algunas de las posibles rearticulaciones y respuestas políticas feministas ante esta realidad, mostrando la complejidad de los retos a los que tienen que hacer frente los feminismos hoy.In times of great feminist effervescence, the political claims of the movement are intermingled with the dangerous reappropriations that neoliberalism makes of its struggle nuclei. The tensions that appear in this context are many and varied, some obvious and some invisible, but all of them contribute to the torsion of feminism. This article will address some of the tensions that arise from the intersection between feminism and neoliberalism: from advertising as a possible feminist tool, to speeches on entrepreneurship and employment, through the design of public policies, and the commodification of female bodies. Some of the possible re-articulations and feminist political responses to this reality will be addressed, showing the great complexity of the challenges that feminisms face today. (shrink)

The neurocognitive structure of the acting self has recently been widely studied, yet is still perplexing and remains an often confounded issue in cognitive neuroscience, psychopathology and philosophy. We provide a new systematic account of two of its main features, the sense of agency and the sense of ownership, demonstrating that although both features appear as phenomenally uniform, they each in fact are complex crossmodal phenomena of largely heterogeneous functional and representational levels. These levels can be arranged within a gradually (...) evolving, onto- and phylogenetically plausible framework which proceeds from basic non-conceptual sensorimotor processes to more complex conceptual and meta-representational processes of agency and ownership, respectively. In particular, three fundamental levels of agency and ownership processing have to be distinguished: The level of feeling, thinking and social interaction. This naturalistic account will not only allow to “ground the self in action”, but also provide an empirically testable taxonomy for cognitive neuroscience and a new tool for disentangling agency and ownership disturbances in psychopathology. (shrink)

The present study examines the comorbidity between specific learning disorders and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder by comparing the neuropsychological profiles of children with and without this comorbidity. Ninety-seven schoolchildren from 8 to 14 years old were tested: a clinical sample of 49 children with ADHD, SLD or SLD in comorbidity with ADHD, and 48 typically-developing children matched for age and intelligence. Participants were administered tasks and questionnaires to confirm their initial diagnosis, and a battery of executive function tasks testing (...) inhibition, shifting, and verbal and visuospatial updating. Using one-way ANOVAs, our results showed that all children in the clinical samples exhibited impairments on EF measures when compared with TD children. A more specific pattern only emerged for the updating tasks. Only children with SLD had significant impairment in verbal updating, whereas children with ADHD, and those with SLD in comorbidity with ADHD, had the worst performance in visuospatial updating. The clinical and educational implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Health professionals are especially exposed to stress, with consequences on professionals’ health and wellbeing. However, palliative care professionals’ wellbeing has been the subject of very little research. The aim of this work is to study the Personal Wellbeing Index in a sample of Spanish palliative care professionals, as well as to study their levels of wellbeing and the relationships of wellbeing with variables such as gender, age, marital status, profession, and professional quality of life. A cross-sectional survey of Spanish palliative (...) care professionals was conducted. The Spanish version of the PWI and the Short version of the Professional Quality of Life Scale were used. Here, 296 palliative care professionals attending patients at the end of life participated in the study. They showed medium to high levels of wellbeing. The PWI showed an adequate internal structure [χ2 = 116.130 ]; Comparative Fit Index = 0.970; standardized root mean square residual = 0.041; root mean square error of approximation = 0.140 ] and excellent estimates of reliability [α = 0.879 and Composite Reliability Index = 0.923]. Wellbeing was higher for married compared to single and showed no relation with age, gender, and profession. Additionally, a structural equation model was estimated, in which a positive relation was found between wellbeing and compassion satisfaction and a negative one with burnout. The PWI is adequate to measure personal wellbeing in Spanish palliative care professionals. (shrink)

Indigenous peoples struggle to survive the policies of the colonial states and their ability to annihilate, make invisible, destroy and re-construct our ancient identities. This is my story. I am an Indigenous women to the country known now as Australia. I write from the inside, about our law and life ways which hare buried alive by a dominant colonizing culture. The tale of terra nullius, its capacity to bury us and its own capacity to survive and go on burying us (...) is told. It is a story which has a resonance beyond Australia, one that can be found throughout the world wherever there is struggle for the future of the planet, wherever there is struggle for diversity, and resistance to being consumed by corporate greed and complicit states. It is finally a story about hope for a way forward, and moving in a clear direction. A direction without illusion, one that braves the truth as to our future as diverse peoples of colour, laws and cultures, the bearers of generations to come. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungAngesichts begrenzter anderweitiger Behandlungsmöglichkeiten wird der Gabe von Antidementiva in der gegenwärtigen medizinischen Demenz-Behandlung eine besondere Bedeutung zugeordnet. Eine evidenzbasierte ethische Analyse unter den Kriterien des Wohlergehens, des Nicht-Schadens, der Autonomie und der Gerechtigkeit zeigt jedoch, dass die Bedeutung von Antidementiva oftmals überschätzt wird und die Erwartungen zu hoch sind: Die Wirksamkeit von Antidementiva ist rein symptomatisch, sie fällt bei einer großen Anzahl an Patienten nur gering aus und bleibt für manche Patienten ohne Nutzen. Zudem sind Antidementiva mit Schadensrisiken behaftet (...) und verbrauchen finanzielle Ressourcen, deren Verteilung auf verschiedenen Ebenen zur Diskussion steht. Angesichts dieser Schwierigkeiten tritt eine bislang nur unzureichend beantwortete Grundfrage des Umgangs mit Demenz-Patienten in den Vordergrund: An welchen Zielen soll sich die Behandlung orientieren? Der folgende Artikel analysiert diese Frage vor dem Hintergrund der Grundstrukturen der derzeitigen Demenz-Behandlung und fordert hier zu einem grundlegenden Umdenken auf. (shrink)

Advances in psychopharmacology raise the prospects of enhancing neurocognitive functions of humans by improving attention, memory, or mood. While general ethical reflections on psychopharmacological enhancement have been increasingly published in the last years, ethical criteria characterizing physicians’ role in neurocognitive enhancement and guiding their decision-making still remain highly unclear. Here it will be argued that also in the medical domain the use of cognition-enhancing drugs is not intrinsically unethical and that, in fact, physicians should assume an important role in gating (...) their usage. For finding normative orientation, concepts of disease, normality or medicine will not be helpful since—due to their cryptonormative nature—they rather hamper than allow targeted discussion and decision-making. As an alternative, the common and widely accepted bioethical criteria of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and distributive justice allow a clinically applicable, highly differentiated context- and case-sensitive approach. By embedding decision-making in a participative physician–patient relationship extrinsic objections against neurocognitive enhancement (e.g. invalid perceptions about efficacy, benefit or risk; questionable voluntariness; restrained decision-making capacity) can be curtailed. (shrink)

Recent work has demonstrated that the sense of agency is not only determined by efference-copy-based internal predictions and internal comparator mechanisms, but by a large variety of different internal and external cues. The study by Moore and colleagues [Moore, J. W., Wegner, D. M., & Haggard, P. . Modulating the sense of agency with external cues. Conscious and Cognition] aimed to provide further evidence for this view by demonstrating that external agency cues might outweigh or even substitute efferent signals to (...) install a basic registration of self-agency. Although the study contains some critical points that, so we argue, are central to a proper interpretation of the data, it hints at a new perspective on agency: optimal cue integration seems to be the key to a robust sense of agency. We here argue that this framework could allow integrating the findings of Moore and colleagues and other recent agency studies into a comprehensive picture of the sense of agency and its pathological disruptions. (shrink)

Die Fortschritte in der Psychopharmakologie führen zu einem immer breiteren Angebot an Substanzen zur Verbesserung der Stimmung, des Gedächtnisses oder der exekutiven Funktionen. Dieses Angebot trifft auf die Wünsche und Bedürfnisse vieler Menschen, ihre mentalen Leistungen und Zustände zu verbessern. Wie sollte die Medizin mit diesen Wünschen umgehen? An welchen Kriterien sollte sich insbesondere der ärztliche Entscheidungsprozess orientieren? Im Folgenden soll gezeigt werden, dass sich aus einer „Treatment-enhancement-Unterscheidung“, einem Krankheits- oder Normalitätsbegriff oder einem bestimmten Medizinkonzept keine zielführenden normativen Kriterien für (...) diesen Entscheidungsprozess ableiten lassen. Demgegenüber wird ein Entscheidungsmodell entwickelt, das auf traditionellen Kriterien ärztlichen Handelns beruht: dem Kriterium des Wohlergehens, des Nichtschadens und der Autonomie. Mit diesem Modell soll zugleich ein neues Konzept einer „wunscherfüllenden Medizin“ vorgeschlagen werden: eine subjektive Medizin mit ärztlichem Empfehlungs- und Vetovorbehalt. (shrink)

Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to semantics as applied to transformational grammars of the ...

In his recent political writings, Habermas has opposed his cosmopolitan project to that of the Bushite neoconservatives. However, this article argues that in some respects Habermas's works come closer to the neoconservative agenda than he realizes and that this poses a potential danger of its being appropriated by precisely the camp he opposes. These problems particularly come to the fore in his analysis of Islamic fundamentalism, democracy and the Middle East, but also in his recommendations concerning UN-based internationalism and his (...) appeals to Woodrow Wilson. By tracking these problematic areas in Habermas's work, this article argues that Habermas needs to engage in a more carefully articulated, concrete and empirical analysis if he is to avoid these problems. (shrink)