Experiencing positive affect and negative affect during stress: relationships to cardiac reactivity and to facial expressions

We examined the relationship between experienced positive/negative affect and cardiac reactivity and facial muscle movements during laboratory tasks with different demands. Heart rate, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, pre-ejection period, and facial electromyography were measured during startle, mental arithmetic, reaction time task, and speech task. The results revealed that individuals experiencing high levels of positive affect exhibited more pronounced parasympathetic, heart rate, and orbicularis oculi reactivity than others. Individuals who experienced high levels of negative affects during the tasks showed higher corrugator supercilii responses. Men and women showed slightly different response patterns. To conclude, cardiac reactivity may be associated with positive involvement and enthusiasm in some situations and all reactivity should not automatically be considered as potentially pathological.     

Spatial integration in Glass patterns

The extraction of a global orientation structure presumably has a different neural mechanism from that of the analysis of its local features. We investigated spatial integration within these two mechanisms using stimulus patterns composed of dot pairs (dipoles). The stimuli targeted local feature detection, contained no global configuration, but rather contained randomly oriented dipoles of a fixed length (the distance between the dots in a pair). For the detection of a global orientation structure, local dipole orientations were arranged in a concentric Glass pattern. Thresholds as a function of a stimulus area were determined by measuring the minimum proportion of dipoles among random-dot noise (signal-to-noise ratio) required for the detection of dipoles (features), as well as for the detection of an orientation structure. Thresholds for feature detection were significantly higher than those for the detection of the global structure--regardless of the stimulus size. Spatial integration, however, did not differ between the two tasks: the exponents of the power functions fitted to data for six observers were -0.48 +/- 0.07 for random dipole orientations and -0.62 +/- 0.1 for Glass patterns.     

Trait lasting alteration of the brain default mode network in experienced meditators and the experiential selfhood

Based on the finding in novices that four months of meditation training significantly increases frontal default mode network (DMN) module/subnet synchrony while decreasing left and right posterior DMN modules synchrony, the current study tested the prediction whether experienced meditators (those who are practising meditation intensively for several years) had a change in the DMN “trinity” of modules as a baseline trait characteristic and whether this change is in a similar direction as in the novice trainees who practised meditation for only four months. Comparison of functional connectivity within DMN subnets (measured by electroencephalogram operational synchrony in the three separate DMN modules) between five experienced meditators and 10 naïve participants (who were about to start the meditation training) fully support the prediction. Interpretation that links such DMN subnets changes to the three-dimensional components of the experiential selfhood was proposed.     

Social cognition, artefacts, and stigmergy: A comparative analysis of theoretical frameworks for the understanding of artefact-mediated collaborative activity

Collective behaviour is often characterised by the so-called ‘coordination paradox’: looking at individual ants, for example, they do not seem to cooperate or communicate explicitly, but nevertheless at the social level cooperative behaviour, such as nest building, emerges, apparently without any central coordination. In the case of social insects such emergent coordination has been explained by the theory of stigmergy, which describes how individuals can effect the behaviour of others (and their own) through artefacts, i.e., the product of their own activity (e.g., building material in the ants’ case). Artefacts clearly also play a strong role in human collective behaviour, which has been emphasised, for example, by proponents of activity theory and distributed cognition. However, the relation between theories of situated/social cognition and theories of social insect behaviour has so far received relatively little attention in the cognitive science literature. This paper aims to take a step in this direction by comparing three theoretical frameworks for the study of cognition in the context of agent–environment interaction (activity theory, situated action, and distributed cognition) to each other and to the theory of stigmergy as a possible minimal common ground. The comparison focuses on what each of the four theories has to say about the role/nature of (a) the agents involved in collective behaviour, (b) their environment, (c) the collective activities addressed, and (d) the role that artefacts play in the interaction between agents and their environments, and in particular in the coordination of cooperation.     

Synthetic fictions: turning imagined biological systems into concrete ones

Synthese - The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be...     

Long-term meditation training induced changes in the operational synchrony of default mode network modules during a resting state

Using theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concept and experimental evidence on the brain default mode network (DMN) that constitutes the neural signature of self-referential processes, we hypothesized that the anterior and posterior subnets comprising the DMN should show differences in their integrity as a function of meditation training. Functional connectivity within DMN and its subnets (measured by operational synchrony) has been measured in ten novice meditators using an electroencephalogram (EEG) recording in a pre-/post-meditation intervention design. We have found that while the whole DMN was clearly suppressed, different subnets of DMN responded differently after 4 months of meditation training: The strength of EEG operational synchrony in the right and left posterior modules of the DMN decreased in resting post-meditation condition compared to a pre-meditation condition, whereas the frontal DMN module on the contrary exhibited an increase in the strength of EEG operational synchrony. These findings combined with published data on functional–anatomic heterogeneity within the DMN and on trait subjective experiences commonly found following meditation allow us to propose that the first-person perspective and the sense of agency (the witnessing observer) are presented by the frontal DMN module, while the posterior modules of the DMN are generally responsible for the experience of the continuity of ‘I’ as embodied and localized within bodily space. Significance of these findings is discussed.     

Are Patient Rights to Information and Self-Determination in Diagnostic Genetic Testing Upheld? A Comparison Of Patients’ and Providers’ Perceptions

This study assessed how the patient’s right to receive information and the right to self-determination were followed during diagnostic testing, according to the perceptions of patients and parents of tested children (group 1, n = 106) and healthcare personnel (group 2, n = 162). Data were collected in three Finnish university hospitals using a questionnaire. Results revealed one between group difference: patients/parents agreed more strongly than did personnel that self-determination was followed before testing. Within groups included: patients/parents had stronger agreement that self-determination was followed before testing than after testing; personnel had stronger agreement about information received after testing than before testing, and they had weaker agreement about how well self-determination was followed before testing than after testing. Received information was experienced as similar both before and after testing and by patients/parents and by personnel. Providing adequate time to consider whether or not to be tested and giving more support to patients after testing would promote the rights of patients. Furthermore, assessment of personnel characteristics is needed to determine, for example, the kinds of value conflicts that exist between personnel’s own values and patients’ values.     

Relationships between hostility, affective ratings of pictures, and state affects during task-induced stress

The authors examined the relationship of hostility with (a) affective ratings of pictures and (b) state affects evoked by task-induced stress in 95 healthy men and women 22-37 years of age. Pictures were from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; P. J. Lang, M. M. Bradley, & B. N. Cuthbert, 1999). Stressors included a startle task, mental arithmetic task, and choice-deadline reaction time task. The circumplex model of affect was used to structure the self-reported state affects. The authors found that hostility was associated with displeasure, high arousal, and low dominance ratings of IAPS pictures. Hostility was related to unpleasant affect and unactivated unpleasant affect during the experiment, and subscale paranoia was related to activated unpleasant affect. Findings suggest that participants scoring high on hostility are prone to negative emotional reactions.     

Influence of the instructions on the performance and establishment of memorization strategies in space judgments

Studies of visual space perception have been assuming that people have an internal representation of the physical space that surrounds them. A variety of psychophysical procedures has been used in an attempt to measure the properties of visual space. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the accuracy of the mental representation and the strategies adopted to acquire and retain visuo-spatial information of a configuration as a function of two types of instructions. Thirty-eight undergraduate and graduate students participated in the study and were distributed in perceptive and mnemonic experimental conditions. The effect of the instructions (intentional and incidental) on the representation of the distances among the objects of the scene was estimated using exponents of power function, based on the reproduction of the distances among the stimuli of the scene. The results revealed that judgments made under intentional instructions were more frequently based on strategies related to the location of the stimuli, whereas judgments originating from incidental instructions were based on strategies related to the name of the stimuli. It was observed that the intentional instruction facilitated a more accurate mental representation of the observed experimental configuration, enhancing participants' performance.     

Sales-as-practice: an introduction and methodological outline

There are strong indications that sales practices are currently being redefined from the ground up and that many of the inherited conceptual models of selling will not hold into a future that is defined by new selling techniques and technologies. This paper introduces a research perspective that can provide an important source of insight into how sales work and salespeople are currently being reconstituted: the sales-as-practice approach. In common with ‘practice turns’ evident in other business literature, such as the recent marketing-as-practice or the by now well-established strategy-as-practice approach, sales-as-practice requires of researchers to develop a sensitivity towards salespeople's ways of doing and being in social and material contexts. While acknowledging potential limitations, we identify some significant benefits of adopting this approach for our conceptual understanding of the sales domain, particularly in understanding persistence and transformation in sales practices, in paying attention to the role of material objects in configuring these practices and in appreciating the role of such practices in producing salespeople's ways of being. Moreover, we argue that becoming more closely acquainted with sales professionals' lifeworlds can aid in bridging the perceived divide between academic and practitioner knowledge in our domain.