Philosophy of Science A Personal Peek into the Future

In this opinion piece, the authors offer their personal and idiosyncratic views of the future of the philosophy of science, focusing on its relationship with the history of science and metaphysics, respectively. With regard to the former, they suggest that the Kantian tradition might be drawn upon both to render the history and philosophy of science more relevant to philosophy as a whole and to overcome the challenges posed by naturalism. When it comes to the latter, they suggest both that metaphysics has much to learn from the philosophy of science and that it offers an array of tools that philosophers of science can themselves appropriate.     

Self‐report measures,facial feedback,and personality differences (BEES) in cooperative vs. noncooperative situations: Contribution of the mimic system to the sense of empathy

The present study integrated three different measures of emotional empathic behavior in a social context: verbal self‐report measures (empathic response, emotional involvement, emotional significance, and valence), facial mimicry (activity of corrugator and zygomaticus muscles), and personal response to the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES). Participants were presented with different interpersonal scene types (cooperation, noncooperation, conflict, indifference). Firstly, self‐rating on empathy, emotional involvement, and valence varied as a function of interpersonal context. Secondly, corrugator activity increased in response to conflictual and noncooperative situations; zygomatic activity increased in response to cooperative situations. Third, high‐ and low‐BEES subjects showed different empathic behavior: High‐empathic subjects were more responsive to empathy‐related situations than low‐empathic subjects. The convergence and divergence of these multidimensional measures was discussed.     

Does Hub‐and‐Spoke organization of healthcare system promote workers' satisfaction?

The healthcare services network is a recent organizational structure of healthcare services that are interdependent and organized as a network on the basis of the Hub‐and‐Spoke model. This questionnaire‐based study analyzed socio‐psychological well‐being of health workers both in terms of team‐related experience and individual satisfaction and engagement with one's work in a Hub‐and‐Spoke healthcare service in comparison to non‐network healthcare service. Workers from two different public healthcare services involved in the treatment of the same skeletal rare diseases participated in the Study. We expected that working under a Hub‐and‐Spoke healthcare service—involving teamwork and cooperation among different healthcare services within the units, as well as among workers belonging to different units—would lead to greater psychological team‐related and individual benefits. In line with predictions, the findings showed that under a Hub‐and‐Spoke healthcare service, health workers felt highly interdependent by their team fellows and developed shared cognitions (i.e., team mental models) about their integration and their tasks to a higher extent than non‐network ones. They were also individually more satisfied of their job and displayed higher work engagement than non‐network workers. Beneficial team‐related dynamics, such as perceived interdependence, were responsible for the differences between the Hub‐and‐Spoke workers and non‐network ones. The implications of the present findings were discussed in terms of promotion of health workers' satisfaction and well‐being.     

Creativity between individual insight and group support. An explorative study in the Italian fashion industry / La creatividad entre la introspección individual y el apoyo grupal. Un estudio exploratorio de la industria de la moda italiana

Abstract

Creativity has been defined across time and fields highlighting different perspectives and variables, from the power of individual insight to creative intelligence, to the role played by mind wandering. After a brief literature review, the present paper presents an explorative study on the dialogue between individual and collective creativity in the fashion industry. The research design is inspired by mix-method research. The dataset is made up of in-depth interviews with 12 Italian stylists, focused on the creative processes. Data have been analysed both in qualitative terms (metaphors analysis) and in quantitative terms (automatic content analysis supported by T-Lab software). According to our results, the creativity processes involved in the fashion industry are mainly individual with a growing role played by teamwork. Stylists present themselves as psychologists in dialogue with their audience, so that the general public, in some sense, become an additional actor in the creative process.     

Exploring consciousness in emotional face decoding: an event-related potential analysis

The author analyzed the role of consciousness in emotional face comprehension. The author recorded psychophysiological measures of event-related potentials (ERPs), elicited by supraliminal and subliminal stimuli when participants viewed emotional facial expressions of 4 emotions or neutral stimuli. The author analyzed an ERP emotion-specific effect (N200 peak variation; temporal interval was 180-300 ms poststimulus) in terms of peak amplitude and latency variables. The results indicated 4 important findings. First, there was an emotional-specific ERP deflection only for emotional stimuli, not for neutral stimuli. Second, the unaware information processing was quite similar to that of aware in terms of peak morphology, but not in terms of latency. In fact, unconscious stimulation produced a more delayed peak variation than did conscious stimulation. Third, valence of facial stimulus (positive or negative) was supraliminally and subliminally decoded because it was showed by differences of peak deflection between negative high arousing (fear and anger) and low arousing (happiness, sadness, and neutral) stimuli. Finally, the author found a more posterior distribution of ERP as a function of emotional content of the stimulus. Cortical lateralization (right or left) was not correlated to conscious or unconscious stimulation. The author discussed the functional significance of her results in terms of supraliminal and subliminal conditions.     

Event-related potentials related to normal and morphed emotional faces

S. Bentin and L. Y. Deouell (2000) have suggested that face recognition is achieved through a special-purpose neural mechanism, and its existence can be identified by a specific event-related potential (ERP) correlate, the N170 effect. In the present study, the authors explored the structural significance of N170 by comparing normal vs. morphed stimuli. They used a morphing procedure that allows a fine modification of some perceptual details (first-order relations). The authors also aimed to verify the independence of face identification from other cognitive mechanisms, such as comprehension of emotional facial expressions, by applying an emotion-by-emotion analysis to examine the emotional effect on N170 ERP variation. They analyzed the peak amplitude and latency variables in the temporal window of 120-180 ms. The ERP correlate showed a classic N170 ERP effect, more negative and more posteriorly distributed for morphed faces compared with normal faces. In addition, they found a lateralization effect, with a greater right-side distribution of the N170, but not directly correlated to the morphed or normal conditions. Two cognitive codes, structural and expression, are discussed, and the results are compared with the multilevel model proposed by V. Bruce and A. W. Young (1986, 1998).     

An ERP study on facial expression of emotion: comparison of linguistic and visual semantic decoding

The present research compared the semantic information processing of linguistic stimuli with semantic elaboration of nonlinguistic facial stimuli. To explore brain potentials (ERPs, event-related potentials) related to decoding facial expressions and the effect of semantic valence of the stimulus, we analyzed data for 20 normal subjects (M age = 23.6 yr., SD = 0.2). Faces with three basic emotional expressions (fear, happiness, and sadness from the 1976 Ekman and Friesen database), with three semantically anomalous expressions (with respect to their emotional content), and the neutral stimuli (face without an emotional content) were presented in a random order. Differences in peak amplitude of ERP were observed later for anomalous expressions compared with congruous expressions. In fact, the results demonstrated that the emotional anomalous faces elicited a higher negative peak at about 360 msec., distributed mainly over the posterior sites. The observed electrophysiological activity may represent specific cognitive processing underlying the comprehension of facial expressions in detection of semantic anomaly. The evidence is in favour of comparability of this negative deflection with the N400 ERP effect elicited by linguistic anomalies.     

Morphed facial expressions elicited a N400 ERP effect: A domain‐specific semantic module?

Previous studies have revealed that decoding of facial expressions is a specific component of face comprehension and that semantic information might be processed separately from the basic stage of face perception. In order to explore event-related potentials (ERPs) related to recognition of facial expressions and the effect of the semantic content of the stimulus, we analyzed 20 normal subjects. Faces with three prototypical emotional expressions (fear, happiness, and sadness) and with three morphed expressions were presented in random order. The neutral stimuli represented the control condition. Whereas ERP profiles were similar with respect to an early negative ERP (N170), differences in peak amplitude were observed later between incongruous (morphed) expressions and congruous (prototypical) ones. In fact, the results demonstrated that the emotional morphed faces elicited a negative peak at about 360 ms, mainly distributed over the posterior site. The electrophysiological activity observed may represent a specific cognitive process underlying decoding of facial expressions in case of semantic anomaly detection. The evidence is in favor of the similarity of this negative deflection with the N400 ERP effect elicited in linguistic tasks. A domain-specific semantic module is proposed to explain these results.